Liselotte L E R O Y Eriksson

2012-03-02T17:41:00.000+01:00

Spring music

2012-03-02T14:00:00.000+01:00

Does anyone else have season specific music preferences? My spring music is the most specific. It mostly consists of Prince (Parade in particular, but anything will do), The Cure's Wild Mood Swings and The Head On The Door, and Jakob Hellman.

I think I will be listening to a lot of New Order too this spring. Overall I find dancey 80s electronic stuff fitting for when the sun comes out and the snow melts.

Robert is extra lovely in this. <3 Also, hi pretty bride. Hiii.

I'm incapable of writing entries nowadays, so; photos!

2012-03-01T02:45:00.001+01:00

Things in Naomi's car.

Dad got me tulips for some reason.

Moonface. (Yeah, I cut my hair prematurely. Sue me! It was worth losing the bet! I was going mad! MAD I TELL YOU! MAD!)

This is how beautiful I look when I have an entire sniffling rat snout in my ear.

With John.

With Edward, who is actually coming around a bit, cuddle-wise.

For a while I had my own waterfall and moat!

Really fantastic moss on lilac bushes.


Nice light.

Good colours.

And yeah, then I cut my hair even more. WHAT'S IT TO YOU? GOD!!! I just... I can't have hair on my head. Whenever I think I want to have it long/er I always imagine someone else's, not my thin whispy pathetic excuse for hair, and I forget how utterly annoying it is to have to style it every single day! Having it buzzed for so long totally spoiled me. I guess if it were properly long I would just be able to brush it and leave it at that, but getting to that length... Just... No.

And some TMI: The main reason I have kept the front bit is that I like having my hair pulled, but no one is really pulling it at the moment anyway, so I'll probably end up buzzing it off sooner or later. It mostly just looks a bit stupid and makes me feel kind of ugly. Plus, even styling that little tuft is driving me nuts!

I don't know. I feel like I should write something proper, but meh.

New painting: Purple

2012-02-28T00:31:00.000+01:00

14 x 27 cm / 5.5 " x 10.6"
original: 450 SEK / £42.50 GBP / $67 USD including shipping
e-mail me at liselotte@liselotteeriksson.com to purchase

I'm having a moodswingy and frustrated day! My scanner and computer screen are confusing me greatly. I think I badly need to calibrate the latter, but I can't figure out how to do it, and I suspect I made things worse by trying. I have no idea how this painting looks on other screens... I need to figure this stuff out.

Ice

2012-02-27T21:33:00.001+01:00

I make very interesting vlogs!!! About important matters! I believe I am saying this:

"Wooh! Icy... I'm going to stand here and let Jacobim drag me into this horse poop. Oh no. I fell over earlier. People pointed and laughed. Not really. Look, I can actually *something I can't make out*. It's a new sport. Woo! I call it... flatcoated retrievering. He's over there. Doing his thang. It's quite pretty here. Not so pretty here, huh? Okay, enough of my... thrilling v- wooh! -logging. Vlogging. Vlogging. Yup!"

New painting: Untitled

2012-02-27T02:07:00.002+01:00

Watercolour
30 x 21 cm / 11.5 x 8.4 "
original: 1200 SEK / $181 USD / £115 GBP including shipping
to purchase: e-mail me at liselotte@liselotteeriksson.com, or leave a comment!

Hi, I'm Liselotte, and I'm apparently obsessed with making dreamlike pastel pictures of faeries and pink flowers. It just happens! I don't plan it!

Behind the jump are progress photos.

Sometimes when I don't know what to paint I just smear some colour onto a paper and see what it turns into. So was the case with this picture.

Progress photos of 'Guardian'

2012-02-25T20:27:00.002+01:00

She looked a lot grumpier to begin with. Kind of sad I lost that.

A base coat of blue.

This bit is fun, where I start seeing sort of how it will look coloured.

Still quite fun but becoming overwhelming...

And at this stage I always hate my painting and think I will never be able to finish it, or any other painting ever again for that matter. It's when all the different colour fields have been filled in but there's SO MUCH shading to be done and I curse myself for having put so much frigging detail in. Then as the shading comes along it gradually becomes more fun again, and then starts the highlighting, which is my one of my favourite bits of painting.

Done! Another bit I love is pulling off the tape used to stick the paper to the drawing board. It's neverendingly fascinating how huge a difference a crisp white border does to a picture previously framed with smudged paint.

Scanned version.

I'm not very good at taking progress photos in any kind of methodical matter. I start out thinking I will take one at each stage of the painting, but then I just do it kind of randomly throughout the painting process. Ah well!

Donkey Kong - a pem by Liselotte Eriksson

2012-02-25T13:48:00.000+01:00

No saucepan
No skylight
No groove

Delivering a boogie
cloud-drenched and free
in Aruba

Hand out these fliers
you said
and gleamed
Superiority
perpetuated once more

That night I dry-humped the moon
my sweet
and dreamed of your collarbone

Haaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaa this one makes me itchy and annoyed in just the right way. Thanks go to Nicolina for naming it (without reading it)!

New painting: Guardian

2012-02-24T02:11:00.002+01:00

Watercolour
30 x 21 cm / 11.5 x 8.4 "
original: 1200 SEK / $181 USD / £115 GBP including shipping
to purchase: e-mail me at liselotte@liselotteeriksson.com, or leave a comment!

YET again, my scanner fails to capture the colours and details properly. I really need to get a new scanner.

Progress photos of this painting coming soon!

Oh dear lord.

2012-02-24T01:39:00.000+01:00

I AM DYING. THIS IS THE BEST THING I HAVE EVER EVER SEEN. IT IS SO PERFECT. NO CAPS ARE CAPSY ENOUGH TO EXPRESS MY APPRECIATION.

Jennifer Saunders is queen of pretty much everything.

2012-02-22T20:52:00.000+01:00

Haaahaa, this may or may not have just made me well up a bit. :D I just love her, okay?! I'd marry her in two seconds flat.

Rat picture time!

2012-02-19T22:15:00.000+01:00

John looking pretty stupid! :D His right eye went a bit funny for a while, but now it's back to normal so I think it was just a fighting wound.

Edward in the house! John eating.

Johnny on the house. Edward in the house.

Edward singing. Trololololo! Or maybe the hiiiiiiills are aliiiiiive! Or phantom of the opera.

Sleepz.

John is really cuddly! Here he fell asleep between my bewbz. Edward on the other hand is not cuddly at all. In fact he is quite antisocial when it comes to humans. It's kind of interesting since they have been treated exactly the same and have been with me for the same amount of time. It's a shame especially since Edward has grown absolutely HUGE, biggest rat I have ever seen, and cuddling with him would be extra amazing, but if he doesn't want to I won't make him. He seems perfectly happy otherwise, he just doesn't like being handled, so I'll have to enjoy his amazing chunkiness with my eyes only.

<3<3<3!

Prints!

2012-02-19T01:20:00.002+01:00

I have decided to sell art prints through deviantART temporarily. I thought the printer I got was good enough to make them myself, but I can't get them quite good enough, so it's deviantART for now.

Prints of my paintings are temporarily available through deviantART until I figure out some other way to have them made.

You can have a look at what is available so far here. If you have requests for other pictures please do tell and I’ll hook you up if possible!

You can order straight from the store, but I’d rather you go through me because then I won’t have to wait for my profit. But either way is cool!

E-mail me at liselotte@liselotteeriksson.com or leave a comment here to order! Thanks!

Getting lost in Åkersberga

2012-02-17T15:37:00.001+01:00

Some photos from a long walk with my sister and Jacobim yesterday. We somehow managed to get lost and didn't know where the hell we were for quite a while, which was rather exciting. We also met a large number of beautiful horses of many colours.

New painting: Demon

2012-02-17T13:04:00.002+01:00

29.7 x 42.0 centimeters / 11.7 " x 16.5 "
Original: 2000 SEK / $296 USD / £189 GBP (including shipping)
Comment or e-mail me at liselotte@liselotteeriksson.com to purchase

When I started this I intended to use my newly purchased gold pen for a picture of a cute and sweet androgynous angel guy... Instead it turned into this, and I didn't even use the gold pen.

Nature shelf

2012-02-16T19:23:00.000+01:00

Welcome to my nature shelf.

Why yes, that is a tiny wooden bear with outstanding front teeth.

The skull is a badger's. The eggs aren't real, but the piranha and bird legs are.

Deer teeth.

Cat skull and mixed bones.

Til we both wake up...?!

2012-02-16T09:26:00.000+01:00

Woke up with this in my head, so now I'm inflicting it on you also. You're welcome!

Natural Evolution - a pem by Liselotte Eriksson

2012-02-15T16:44:00.000+01:00

Like tiny fishes
like minnows
coaxing a hamster wheel
into submission

I bribed them with a monster newt
Its spine; curved
ridiculous and flaccid

A laughter
half-inflated
glued to yellow lips

Oh well, enough said.

2012-02-15T04:03:00.006+01:00

I really hate going to bed. I hate the whole concept of ceasing to do fun things and going to do nothing for x number of hours instead. I used to think my reluctance to go to bed was a way to procrastinate the unpleasantness of the following day (boring chores, getting out of bed, etc.) but that's not it, since I put off going to bed even when the day after is nothing but fun and does not entail getting up at any specific time.

Like right now. It's 3.30 am and I'm absolutely exhausted. I have nothing particularly interesting or urgent to do. Tomorrow is as far as I know going to be positively lovely. I can sleep for as long as I feel like since I am off work. Still I sit here and refresh the same three pages over and over again, and watch stuff on YouTube. It would be undeniably more pleasant if I watched those things tomorrow when I will be well rested and not having to struggle to keep my eyes open.

It's fine if I have stuff to do. I'm glad I go into psycho night owl mode when I am painting for instance. Then it's totally worth it. This is just stupid.

I think it's just the loneliness of an empty bed that gets to me, sappy as it may sound. I do feel a bit lonely quite a lot since I'm pretty social in general and I live alone, but I'm fine as long as I have things to do. I quite enjoy going to bed the nights I have company in it. (As in someone I can interact physically with in one way or another. When Naomi spends the night I tend to be up for hours after she has gone to sleep.) I don't know, sleeping alone is just sad to me. I'm kind of a restless sleeper; I toss and turn a lot, but if there's someone next to me it seems like I automatically stay somewhat still, which makes it easier to sleep calmly. Sometimes I have to visualize being tied down to be able to feel even remotely peaceful. Also I wake up at least a couple of times every night, and when I'm alone it's just kind of unpleasant, but if I have someone there it's quite cosy to wake up and go "oh hey, that guy is there" and hug him and not fret about not being able to go back to sleep because it's nice enough to just lie there.

But it's the act of going to bed and falling asleep that is the worst. I can sometimes distract myself from feeling lonely by watching movies or listening to audio books, but it's difficult to find something that is interesting enough to keep my attention, yet not so stimulating that I perk right up AND COMPLETELY LOSE TRACK OF THE WHOLE SLEEP THING. It's all just... uncomfortable. I really envy people who look forward to going to bed, because I never ever do, no matter how tired I am.

I think I might also dread having nightmares, because both my normal dreams and my nightmares are extremely vivid, and can shake me up quite a bit and haunt me for the entire day if they are extra bad. I wake up crying or laughing or talking quite regularly. I actually have nightmares more often when I am feeling good in general. It's like my subconscious has this certain amount of bad stuff it needs to indulge in, and it sees sleep as an opportunity to do so without me stopping it. It's kind of annoying how my sleeping habits are still fucked when I feel so much more in control of pretty much all other parts of my life. But hopefully I'll get that somewhat sorted at some point too.

That was accidental Caps Lock up there, by the way.

I suppose I should go to bed now.

2012-02-15T00:49:00.000+01:00

“Some people bring out the worst in you, others bring out the best, and then there are those remarkably rare, addictive ones who just bring out the most. Of everything. They make you feel so alive that you’d follow them straight into hell, just to keep getting your fix.”

Karen Marie Moning

Valetine's Day Picture Party!

2012-02-14T21:23:00.000+01:00

Celebrating Valentine's Day by posting a shitload of lovey dovey/heartshaped/sexytimes pictures on Tumblr. (Many old things! Some of them embarrassing!)

And here are some photos of me and my Valentine.

New painting: Rosa canina

2012-02-12T21:14:00.001+01:00

29.7 x 42.0 centimeters / 11.7 " x 16.5 "
Original: 2000 SEK / $296 USD / £189 GBP (including shipping)
e-mail me at liselotte@liselotteeriksson.com to purchase

Yeah, I'm a pretty good writer.

2012-02-10T19:17:00.001+01:00

Longbottom

Ripped apart
by a ten foot calf
The cow looking blankly on

I bimbled past
with shoes untied
My smile; obscene
at last

Hush, my love
my normal love
My winter coat
so blue

Your bladder
succinctly swaying
Binoculars askew

The meeses

2012-02-08T14:30:00.000+01:00

Kajsa

Mimmi peeking out of a house Miranda and I made them

Miranda, my niece and rightful owner of the mice, giggling frantically with Kajsa on her shoulder

Kajsa's butt

New painting: The gentleman with the thistle-down hair

2012-02-08T04:31:00.002+01:00

Size: 30 x 21 cm / 11.5 x 8.4 "

The gentleman with the thistle-down hair from Susanna Clarks's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

This is probably my favourite fictional faerie. (The book, by the way, is along with Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens my favourite book of al time.) There is no way I could ever do him justice, but... I tried. I'm not happy with it, but I don't hate it with the fire of a thousand suns. This painting is actually my second attempt at getting him down on paper; the first is hidden away; unscanned and hidden from the world... We'll see if I decide to scan it later once the initial shame has faded.

The perfectionist in me detests drawing literary characters because they never turn out the way I see them in my head. This, however, is not very strange since I never have clear images in my head of characters in books; they are always blurry and changeable. But even if I can't say exactly how my favourite characters look, I can say how they definitely do not look, and I am extremely picky with illustrations and castings for potential film adaptations. (Antonio Banders playing Armand still makes me upset, even though I really dig Antonio. And don't get me started on the atrocious Tinkerbells out there.)

Now let's see if I can muster the courage to try to draw Peter Pan. I did do it once a long time ago, but times were different then, I was a man at that age... I was the master of a large plantation just south of New Orleans. I had lost my wife in childbirth. She and the infant had been buried less than half a year. I would have been happy to join them... </vampire dork> What? Where was I? Oh yeah, I did draw Peter, but I didn't love him so deeply back then, so it wasn't so daunting.

New painting: Unicorn ACEO

2012-02-07T17:52:00.000+01:00

2.5 " x 3.5 " / 6,4 x 8.9 cm
$22 USD / 145 SEK / £14 GBP including shipping

Hahaaa, fatty Bim!

2012-02-07T01:55:00.000+01:00

New painting: Woman ACEO

2012-02-06T21:44:00.000+01:00

2.5 " x 3.5 "
$22 USD / 145 SEK / £14 GBP including shipping

New painting: Rat With Tea ACEO

2012-02-06T19:34:00.000+01:00

2.5 " x 3.5 "
$22 USD / 145 SEK / £14 GBP including shipping

Phone photo dump!

2012-02-05T15:53:00.001+01:00

Chandelier. Wine glasses. Snow.

My new pig! His name is Olle for some reason. And also a grave lantern I bought. I am a very tasteful and classy lady.

Same as above + Naomi's car and tree.

It's very cold at the moment, and very snowy. This is my head somewhere in that humongous scarf Johanna knitted for me many moons ago.

Mia and me with pouty lips at Berwaldhallen waiting for a performance by Ola Salo and Sveriges Radios Symfoniorkester. It was great.

A mysterious box. Te most mysterious thing about it was that the door was barricaded from the outside!!!!!!111one!!!!!

This poster has made me lol daily for a long time. The best thing is that there are a bunch of other posters in the shop with people holding cards with their wishes, and the other people wished for peace on earth and their books being published and such. I imagine the people in charge of the photo shoot telling everyone to write down their wishes, and this chick was all "HEEHEE I'LL WRITE SOMETHING WHIMSICAL AND CUTE!!!" and then she saw the other people's wishes and felt like a complete idiot, hence her uncomfortable facial expression.

Miranda has the BEST face. She looks like Thumper! Here she was doing a puppet theatre for me and mum.

Miranda again with one of my birthday cakes.

2012-02-05T02:22:00.000+01:00

Tonight I feel like writing something terribly sad and beautiful because I'm feeling melancholy, but I can't, or am afraid to, or both.

So instead here is a terribly sad and beautiful Charles Bukowski poem that makes me cry.

for Jane

225 days under grass
and you know more than I.

they have long taken your blood,
you are a dry stick in a basket

is this how it works?

in this room
the hours of love
still make shadows.

when you left
you took almost
everything.

I kneel in the nights
before tigers
that will not let me be.

what you were
will not happen again.

the tigers have found me
and I do not care.

Teen Lisis

2012-02-04T18:06:00.000+01:00

Scanned and inverted negatives from when I was 16-18.

Why I Stopped Taking Pretty Pictures

2012-01-31T23:41:00.000+01:00

Once in a while people ask me why I don't do much photography anymore.

I... don't really know why. At some time a couple of years ago I just lost interest in dressing people up and taking pretty pictures of them, and since that was what I was good at I just fell out of the habit of taking pictures other than for this blog or to document parties or Miranda or whatever. I guess it just started to feel silly and pointless. There are still some of my arranged photos that I do like, because they have some meaning or feeling to them that goes beyond prettiness, and I quite like a lot of unposed outtakes from my arranged shoots because I like the real/pretend combo of obvious dress-up and natural body language, especially when it feels like a snapshot of something otherworldly, or just... something strange. I like photos that make you wonder what the frick is going on. I'm still very fond of most of the photos I did for my photo exhibition for instance. They were the last arranged ones I did, I think.

Mostly I'm just interested in documentary photos nowadays, but quite frankly I lack the technical skills to take those. I'm kind of really shit at the practical bits, and I'm not quite interested enough to learn about settings and lighting and such. I never did learn how to use a digital camera properly; when I did arranged stuff I could just kind of wing it. I could just add another lamp or whatever if the lighting was too poor. Working with natural light takes more knowledge and I don't really feel engaged enough to put effort into acquiring that. It's difficult taking interesting photos when you can't rely on props and costumes.

I'm not sure why I don't feel the same way about paintings or drawings. I mean, they are as arranged as they possibly can be, and I feel like they should feel as pointless, but they just don't. Maybe it's because it's impossible not to infuse some part of my soul into them since they come 100% from the inside of my head. Then again there is lots of art out there that feels soulless too, and once in a while I never want to paint again because I feel like I make nothing of value, but that usually passes after a while... I don't know. I'm all drugged up on various painkillers due to another attack of THE CRAMPS OF DOOM, so I'm a bit rambly. Yes. This is my excuse for being incoherent.

New Painting: Some Pixie

2012-01-30T22:39:00.000+01:00

12.6 / 12.6 cm / 5 " x 5 "
Original: 450 SEK / £42.50 GBP / $67 USD including shipping

This looks a lot better in real life, I promise. And yeah, it's pretty damn Froudian...

Cold turtle?

2012-01-28T02:54:00.001+01:00

The search phrase "cold turtle" keeps popping up in my stats! What's with that? Is it like... a thing? Or just a straight up cold turtle?

If you are one of the people who got here by googling this I would love to be informed of the reason behind this! :D

This is why you find me when you search for cold turtles

Fun fact: Another common word to find me by is "leotard". (Hi, leotard lovers! You won't find what you're looking for here!)

Pictures of my studio/bedroom/livingroom/whatsit

2012-01-27T01:16:00.000+01:00

Since very few people ever come to my house since I have fallen behind on this whole having friends ordeal lately I will just ~~cry myself to sleep~~ show the interwebz how nice it is instead.

I move things around almost daily because I'm a bit of an obsessive weirdo, but this is what it looks like right this minute.

From the door. HELLO ROOM. The mice live on the top shelf of the bookshelf to the left.

My favourite window. I wish I could put this many plants in the other one, but the rats hang out there and they are plant-killers extraordinaire. I didn't use to have any plants at all for years and years because I was all NOOO THEY'LL JUST DIIIE ON MEEEE and now I just want more and more. Turns out if you water them when they are dry they don't die! Who could have known?

Where the magic happens.

I totally dig the hideous brown-striped 70s wallpaper outside the door, especially combined with my fantastic checkered floor OH YEAH.

Where I am located right this second.

THE END.

New Painting: Untitled

2012-01-24T20:53:00.001+01:00

29.7 x 42.0 centimeters / 11.7 " x 16.5 "
Original: 2000 SEK / $296 USD / £189 GBP (including shipping)

My annoyance with how badly scanners pick up depth and nuances is steadily growing... >:/ You'll just have to trust me that my paintings are loads nicer in real life.

An obnoxiously pleasant evening

2012-01-24T03:17:00.000+01:00

Yeah 'cause I'm not at all hunched over now that I have a drawing table or anything...

I spent this evening and night being disgustingly pleased with everything for no reason other than my bedroom/studio/livingroom being so cosy and my rats being so best and my very unfancy dinner being so tasty and my friend Niclas fangirling so hilariously over Stephen Colbert and me managing to make a much better version of a drawing I fucked up a few days ago. And as a bonus it's very pretty and snowy outside, and I don't have work tomorrow, and I had smoked almonds. Okay, so three bonuses.

Mostly I'm pleased that I can be pleased. I have a tendency to stop myself from enjoying stuff by focusing on what is lacking or negative things that might happen, so whenever I find myself being calm all the way through I feel extra grateful.

Oak branches

2012-01-23T12:47:00.000+01:00

Creepy gorgeous snowy oak branches are creepy and gorgeous and snowy.

Not so creepy in the warm glow of a street light.

New rat cage

2012-01-22T18:05:00.001+01:00

Because I'm a classy broad I brought our old trashcan inside to use as a new cage for the rats. I have been eyeing since before I got the rats but never got around to do anything about it, mostly because it was firmly screwed onto a heavy plate thing that seemed stuck in the ground, but dad kindly helped me get it off with his brute strength.

The ungrateful jerks took quite a while to make proper use of their new awesome abode, but now they are climbing around it like little furry bosses.

Where's John?

Hi John!

First I considered keeping Miranda in it instead, and she seemed perfectly happy with the idea.

Edward is always trying to get to my fern!

Haha, lumpy fat Edward!

Mimmi & Kajsa

2012-01-20T19:53:00.000+01:00

I have two new rodent buddies! Smaller ones this time, in the shape of two lady mice called Mimmi and Kajsa. (Mimmi Pigg = Minnie Mouse. Kajsa Anka = Daisy Duck.) Officially they are not mine; they are my niece Miranda's (and she is the one who named them), but I'm keeping them at my place and will be doing most of the caretaking. The plan is that she will come over to clean the cage, but we'll see about that. ;) Mostly I just use Miranda's love of mice as an excuse to have some around again. Mice are one of the most perfect things in the world if you ask me, and I can stare at them for a million years. (THEIR PAWS, YOU GUYS. THEY ARE THE SMALLEST PAWS.) I like solid colour ones the most, so I'm extra glad these were the only available ones, hehe.

They are very brave and fun! They gnawed their way out of the box we got them in on the way home, and making sure they didn't disappear in the dark car was quite the challenge.

They only have a small tank so far, and I intend to get a bigger one tomorrow. Miranda has drawn posters for them; one of a tulip and one of a purple piece of cheese with three mice peeking out the holes. :D

Kajsa and Mimmi doing a weird twin pose.

Perfect.

Like the rats they are not afraid of Jacobim at all, and he loves them. I don't trust him around them the way I do with the rats though, so they won't be seeing much of each other. I think the rats are big enough for him to think of them as weird puppies, but the mice are a bit more bite-sized.

Fog

2012-01-20T01:17:00.000+01:00

Foggy nights = crappy photo time!

OMG a ghost above Niclas!!! Call TAPS!

Monstrous tractor about to attack our pool tent!

Little Pictures For Little Money!

2012-01-15T18:21:00.005+01:00

These are ACEOs, so they are all 2.5 " x 3.5 "

I'm drowning in small pictures I don't know what to do with! Help!

There's no way I'm measuring all of these, but the biggest one is 5 "x 8 " so the rest are smaller than that.

One for $7, two for $12, three for $15 + $2 shipping everywhere. Paypal only, unless you can transfer money to a Swedish bank account. (Prices are in USD. If you want to pay with SEK, GBP or EUR that is perfectly fine. Use this converter or ask me what it costs in other currencies.)

Leave a comment or drop me an e-mail at liselotte@liselotteeriksson.com to purchase!

Disclaimer: Some of these have slight folds, smudges or stains, but they should be visible in the photos.

Dream places

2012-01-15T15:29:00.000+01:00

I have a few places that pop up in my dreams once in a while. Some of them I know are based on real places; some are just made up, and some I am not sure of.

My favourite dream place is a sculpture park thing. It's not very big, just a little green area between houses in a calm old part of some unknown city. I think it's a place where they have dumped old unwanted statues from other parks and cemeteries, so most of them are crackled and broken and old, and they are crammed together tightly in rows next to sidewalks and paths. There are a lot of animals; many lions and mythological beasts. There is one lion in particular that I love, it is placed by a gate on a bit of a hill in one corner of the area. I wish I could remember my first dream about this place because as I recall it was very important that I found it for some reason, and I went through a lot of trouble making sure I did.

Another place that doesn't so much pop up in my sleep dreams but still goes "Hey, remember me?" once in a while is another park. I'm fairly sure this is a real place that I went to with dad sometime as a kid. I like to think that dad had a dentist in the area, and that we hung out in the park whilst waiting for his appointment. I have asked him about it but he doesn't know what it is. (He's a scatterbrain like me though so I don't expect him to remember it, and it most have been over 20 years ago that I saw it, if I ever saw it at all.) It isn't very exciting at all so I'm not sure why it made such an impression on me, or why I made it up if that was the case. It's a pretty open place with a big lawn divided by a walkway in the middle, and on one side of it there is a small area with a few trees, I think a fountain and two or three walls of bronze statues with a green patina. The statues are all human or humanoids, perhaps gods and godessess. I don't think they look like classic statues, I think they are somewhat modern. The buildings surounding the park are large, tall and uninteresting, and the whole area feels somewhat gray, possibly because it was an overcast day when I went there (if I did go there at all).

Another real place is a long car tunnel with very yellow lights. Or well, it's many car tunnels with yellow lights; not a specific one. For some reason my brain connects these tunnels with the sound of methodically brushing ones teeth whilst humming two specific notes over and over again. Umm, yeah... I don't know.

I also often think about a particular tiny patch of woodland by a parking lot next to my mum's ex boyfriend's apartment. I don't think I ever went into this tiny wood, I just saw it from the car a few times. I have no idea why this place etched itself into my mind. It's not special in any way.

There's a third place with statues. This one is completely made up, unfortunately. It's an outdoors museum next to something that might be a very strange version of the Royal Castle in Stockholm. The statues are inside a very tall roof-less building that is made of white marble and looks very ancient Greek. I think it might be partly crumbled, but I'm not sure. The statues inside are huge, all white marble and classic. Many gods and godesses. I have dreamed about this place many times, and finding it is always difficult, like it can decide when it wants to show itself and when it doesn't want you to find it.

There are actually more statue places, but they are very loose and change a lot and I can't quite describe any of them. As you can tell I'm pretty much obsessed with old statues. Object-wise they are by far my favourite thing, especially lion ones, and the more covered in moss and ivy they are the better. I can't even explain how much I love them, hahaaa, they make me feel all weird. Anyway...

There is also a secret non-existing room in my house that I would dream about all the time as a child, and sometimes now too. It was located behind dad's workshop, and you could only get into it through a small window up by the ceiling. The room was more or less the same as the room that is actually there in real life, but because it was hidden and forgotten I would always find old things in there that I had forgotten about, or old things I had never seen before. Everything was dusty and very messy and cluttered. Sometimes it was nice to find the room, and sometimes it was nightmareish, depending on what I found in there.

I also dream about a place that is a mall/subway station/hospital/airport a lot. The dreams in there are almost always vague nightmares about not being on time or not finding my way or getting trapped in elevators.

New painting: Tuesday Evening in the Woods

2012-01-15T13:47:00.001+01:00

29.7 x 42.0 centimeters / 11.7 " x 16.5 "
Original: 2500 SEK / $370 USD / £236 GBP including shipping

My top five TAPS members

2012-01-14T15:11:00.001+01:00

I know you have been dying to know, so...

1. Grant
2. Steve
3. Jason
4. Dustin
5. Kris

I could list my least favourites, but let's not spread negativity, k? *cough*Barry*cough*

New painting: Three + Three

2012-01-13T20:16:00.001+01:00

29.7 x 42.0 centimeters / 11.7 " x 16.5 "
Original: 2000 SEK / $296 USD / £189 GBP (including shipping)

Forced entry (I'm so punny)

2012-01-12T03:41:00.002+01:00

This is me forcing myself to write a blog entry. Hi!

I have cleaned my nest very thoroughly and moved crap around and the affection I feel for it is bordering on unhealthy. I really really really love my bedroom/studio/computer room, you guys. I sit and stare at it a lot.

I have been focusing on fixing small snags in my daily life to make things easier and more flowy. For instance I have set up an over-zealous trash system to reduce the amount of garbage lying around waiting to get sorted for recycling by purchasing four small trashcans for my main room; one for metal, one for plastic, one for paper packages and one for general garbage. I have put these on my wall. It looks surprisingly nice and I feel all organised and good when I put things in the rightful container. I've done something similar in the kitchen too. I have also gotten a laundry hamper for the absurd amount of Pepsi Max bottles that tend to gather around me. Plus I now have five laundry hampers spread across the place to keep the clothing on the floor at a minimum. So far it's working like a charm. I still need to make my kitchen feel friendlier so i won't hate spending time in there. When I moved in here I thought it was a great idea to have an all black and white kitchen, but now the lack of colour in there just makes me sad, and I avoid spending any length of time in there if possible. I wish I had painted the walls orange. Maybe I will some time.

I realized a few days ago that I might have gotten stuck in the preparation phase again. I'm all "Okay, I will start painting once I have finished cleaning..." and then I get stuck on all kinds of ridiculous details and never get around to painting because, you know, it's crucial for my painting process that the plants are placed perfectly in the window, or that there are enough red things on that shelf. It's very silly. So I've decided that tomorrow is the day I stop getting ready to do things and start doing things. I'm going to try out my drawing table, and my sister is coming over to hang out and talk about some plans we have for the future.

I'm not listening to music very much at the moment. I go through periods when I kind of forget music exists and just do everything in silence. It's a bit strange since normally I listen to music 90% of the time. Right now it's not so much about silence as it is about YouTube documentaries on paganism and the paranormal, because I'm awesome like that.

I'm doing pretty good in general. Things feel good, like I'm not fighting myself so much anymore. I'm a bit proud of myself because I really have gotten a lot better at stopping negative thoughts before they settle down in my brain and start acting like they own the place. I had two extremely difficult days in late December that were quite frightening, but other than that I have really done very well. I recognize when my brain starts to go funny so much quicker than I used to, and I know how to slap sense into it and get it back on track. (Also those two bad days taught me two things: I should not be alone on holidays and birthdays even if I think it's no big deal, and that I need to be extra cautious a few days before my period because holy hell hormones are such epic drama-loving bitches!) Okay, it feels like I have written this exact same thing many times before. Whatever. It's still... good. Or something. GO AWAY.

Naomi and I went to the recycling center/dump/whatsit tonight and it was so exciting! It felt like a field trip! It's so strangely intriguing to me to see where people's junk goes, and everything felt so organized and weirdly cozy, probably much because it was dark, in the middle of the woods and the girl who worked there was lovely. I kiiind of really want to work there. It seems so nice. It would be so satisfying to sort crap into dumpsters all day and wear cool overalls. They had a little cottage thing that looked really nice too.

I have been having very vivid dreams lately. My favourite involved a rather terrifying humongous moose that had no front legs and jumped around on its hind legs like a monstrous kangaroo.

Here are some photos.

Hehehe. Naomi sleeping on my cluttered bed.

John and Edward trying to get to my lucious fern. Hooligans!

My face. Hi.

Birthday celebration number two. Aunt Mai-Britt, dad, bed-jumping Miranda, mean aunt Kerstin and uncle Lennart. Miranda and I decorated the cake. It was tasty but quite ugly.

These photos make it seem like I never go outside. This is largely accurate.

New Years Face

2012-01-10T13:12:00.000+01:00

Have a random photo of me on New Years Eve. Sadly, my seeming nakedness is merely an illusion. I wish there were photos of my whole outfit because I did look a bit spectacular, but I was too busy dancing ridonculously ~~and falling off chairs while doing so~~ to pose for pictures.

It was a very weird New Years eve, but it turned out pretty good in the end. Plus I wore false eyelashes for the first time, which was exciting in itself.

Birthday Dinner + Drawing Table YAY

2012-01-07T18:54:00.000+01:00

I turned 30 last week, and last night we went for a celebratory family dinner at a local restaurant, and then back to my place for cake. I got a drawing table!!! No more shrimp-like back-hurty drawing positions for me!!!

Hi beautiful table. Hiiii.

Niece Miranda holding my nephew and her cousin Bastiaan for the first time.

Me and sister in law Marlies. We were being Pretty.

Miranda is quite a bit cooler than I am.

She has gotten really into photobombing recently, it's pretty good. In the background is dad, Anders, mum in the dark and my sister Mia.

Brother Andreas, mum and nice lamps.

Miranda's food. She had pancakes and wrote "pancake" on her napkin.

Back at mi casa for cake.

Miranda having cake and drawing by my old crappy table.

Tomorrow it's time for more cake when I'm having my uncles and aunts over for a second birthday celebration.

Perfectionism

2012-01-05T04:36:00.002+01:00

So it turns out I'm kind of a huge perfectionist. People have pointed this out to me before but I'm always all "LOL CLEARLY you haven't seen the state of my house!" but a while ago I realized that my house is so messy a lot of the time because I'm a perfectionist. I only really feel like cleaning if I know I will get it done perfectly, and that requires quite a bit of time and effort that I don't have or am not willing to give up. (Maybe I should point out that cleaning "perfectly" means something kind of different to me than to many other people, but it still applies.)

And holy crap have I perfectionisted (you heard me) my way into not accomplishing things artwise! For instance; I have been planning to make a childrens book for half my freaking life, and I have started like ten of them, but since they weren't perfect I gave up on them. I have loads of ideas for them and people tell me all the time I should do childrens books, but... no. And I hate doing commissions because the pressure to make them perfect gets even worse when someone has paid me to do them, and I'm pretty much never happy with the results even if the person who commissioned me is perfectly pleased.

I also have a need to be perfect in my opinions and feelings. I've wasted a shitload of energy on trying to decide what to think about all kinds of issues that I have no real reason to have an opinion about at all. I mean; it's one thing if they are things I'm properly interested in, but half the time I just feel kind of forced to find the Perfect Opinion so I will have it ready if someone asks me about it. It's really pathetic. And man have I beaten myself up about having the wrong feelings! I'm not really the kind to blow up in people's faces or get very angry or whatever, but when it does happen I have an amazingly difficult time to forgive myself for it. If I'm not perfectly understanding and accepting and calm at all times I feel like a massive failure who is more trouble than I am worth.

I have also spent a lot of time thinking I couldn't be in a committed relationship because I wasn't "done yet", like I would one day wake up as a beautiful perfect butterfly or whatever. I'm starting to understand that this will not happen.

It even makes me put off really tiny things like answering comments or sending e-mails. I'm all "Noooo, I need to spend more time on this so I can word it perfectly..." which usually either amounts to 1) not doing it at all, or 2) forcing myself to do it and then it just gets rushed and stupid. This goes for more or less all e-mails; including two sentence ones asking a printer how much they charge to print something. Because OBVIOUSLY it's really important that I don't come off as stupid or whatever to the faceless printer guy who has no idea who I am.

My standards for myself are vastly different than for other people, and I never understood why that was. The only explanation I could think of why I didn't allow to fuck up once in a while like other people was that I somehow thought I was above them, and then I had to beat myself up for thinking I was superior, but it didn't feel right at all since I haven't been the most confident person in the world for most my life. Then I read the section on perfectionism in The 10 Dumbest Mistakes Smart People Make and How To Avoid Them (that I got for dad for Christmas to read myself) and realized that the reason I think it's fine for other people to make mistakes is that they are already good enough as it is, while I myself am worthless if I'm not 100% perfect. It's funny (as in pretty fucking sad) that when I mess up I fully accept and expect that I will not be forgiven for it, even if it's a minor mistake and I have apologized for it; yet if someone else does something shitty to me I think I am the sucky one if I can't forgive them.

I need to learn to use my perfectionism to push me to achieve grand things instead of letting it keep me from doing anything at all, and the only way to do that is to let myself fail a whole lot. I need to learn to assess when it's productive to work towards perfection, and when it's better to just aim for good.

And god damn is that tricky.

Favourite

2012-01-03T15:25:00.001+01:00

My current favourite spot in my room is the most cluttered. But it's good clutter. I can stand for this clutter.

New tumblr

2012-01-02T11:41:00.003+01:00

Made a tumblr for my pictures + other people's related art:
http://liselotte-e.tumblr.com/

2011

2011-12-26T01:32:00.000+01:00

1. What did you do in 2011 that you'd never done before?
1. Saw Jedward.
2. Got stitches.
3. Went on a date.
4. Went to the movies alone.
5. Started recycling properly.

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Umm, hm. In a way. I resolved to focus more on happiness and less on pleasure, and I also declared 2011 as the year of bridge burning. While I didn't get extremely far I do think that laid some foundation for keeping them in the future. Or something. Or actually now that I think about it those were birthday resolutions, but it doesn't matter, it's only three days apart. Next year I am sticking with those + will make some very concrete resolutions for next year about art stuff.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes, my brother Andreas' wife Marlies squeezed out a pretty swanky dude named Bastiaan.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What countries did you visit?
England.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
1. More self control.
2. More money.
3. More intimacy.
4. More kink.
5. An art show.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
April 16th, the last time I shaved my head before not being allowed to cut or trim it for a whole year. Except that's a lie, because I actually had to look it up now, so it's not etched upon my memory at all. I don't really remember dates.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Keeping my head above the water, painting 11 pictures in less than a month, understanding a lot of emotional crap.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Self sabotage due to lingering cowardice.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I think I was surprisingly unsick this year. I did get my first stitches though, and had the single worst cramps attack of my life, but other than that I was okay most of the year.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Probably the Jedward concert ticket. ^___^

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Pretty much everyone around me! Everyone has been really great this year as far as I can remember.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
My own at times.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Food. Always food. I haven't bought much stuff this year at all.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
3 Wishes Faery Fest!

16. What song will always remind you of 2011?
Lipstick by Jedward and Map of Tasmania by Amanda Palmer.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Happier.
b) thinner or fatter? About the same.
c) richer or poorer? The same.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Cleaning actually, because I have realized I feel a lot better when my house is somewhat tidy. And I also wish I had gone for longer better walks with Bim and spent more time with Miranda.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Thinking I could read minds. Dillydallying. Self disgust.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
Spent it with my immediate family and a stray uncle at my sister's house.

21. Did you fall in love in 2011?
No, and I kind of feel like that was a good thing.

22. How many one-night stands?
None.

23. What was your favourite TV program?
The Walking Dead and Ghost Hunters.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
No.

25. What was the best book you read?
I really enjoyed The Lives of Christopher Chant until I decided to stop reading it just before the end, as I tend to do for some reason... I don't know. I don't remember what I have read!

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
=:)

27. What did you want and get?
Cake? I don't know. Some Christmas presents.

28. What did you want and not get?
The same things listed in the things I want in 2012 question. I also realized I wanted a sub, which was pretty exciting, and for a moment I thought I would get one, but then I didn't. But it was still really interesting to realize I wanted one.

29. What was your favourite film of this year?
Harry Potterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I haven't had my birthday yet, it's on Wednesday, and I have no plans.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Peace of mind.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
I think I have boiled down my varying styles to three major categories that bleed into eachother a lot:
1. Chick Who Works In A Comic Book Store in the 90s (This is the most common one.)
2. Glamorous Shiny Slutbitch of Doom (for partying)
3. Fuck Yeah Goth-Goth (This will work better once I am allowed to cut my hair.)

33. What kept you sane?
I haven't been sane the whole year, but I have worked out some things that help me keep on track most of the time. Paying close attention to what thoughts I allow inside my head and keeping my living space somewhat tidy being the two major ones.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Andrei Arlovski, Robert Pattinson (BECAUSE HE'S LOVELY, OKAY? Not because he's pretty!), Sheldon Cooper (not Jim Parsons) and James Deen. Yeah...

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
Gender equality and sex positivity stuff I guess. I'm not very involved.

36. Who did you miss?
Linus, Briony, Fiend, Monkey, Robert.

37. Who was the best new person you met?
The monster guy at the masquerade! I only met him once but he was the bomb!

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.
I learned that I myself am responsible for not having a majority of the things I want in life. That replacing communication with speculation out of fear that the truth will be painful is a shitty idea, especially since my speculations tend to lean toward the negative. Also, I learned that spending a whole night outdoors in Plymouth without a sleepingbag might sound like fun, but isn't really.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
"She's so hot hot hot I'm like what what what"
Miss America - Jedward

Not really, I just can't be arsed thinking of a real one.

New painting: Eco Mermaid

2011-12-26T00:09:00.000+01:00

An illustration for Mermaids and Mythology Magazine

Christmas Eve

2011-12-25T20:54:00.000+01:00

Christmas Eve was spent at my sister's house with dad, mum, Miranda, the sister herself, the sister's fiance Anders and his parents, Jacobim and the rats. I didn't stay very long because I just didn't feel like it for some reason, but it was nice. We ate food and opened gifts, because we wacky Swedes open our gifts on the 24th instead of on the 25th.

I'm actually surprisingly uninterested in what happens on Christmas eve for someone who really loves Christmas. It's a bit odd.

Anyway, here are phoots:

Yeah... Me and Mia. Dunno what's up with my left tit but I'm leaving it uncropped because it amuses me. Miranda wore the Minnie ears initially, but they ended up on me pretty fast; I think to not make me die from her cuteness.

AWWWWWWWWWWWW. Miranda isn't really all that fond of Jacobim, to be honest. She thinks he is big and annoying. I can't say she is wrong, but I still like him.

How super idyllic wouldn't this be without the big candy bulk in her hamsterous cheek!

I like to imagine her holding some sort of large weapon instead of a package containing skis.

Photobombing Miranda!

Mia and Robert (Miranda's paternal granddad) lighting the chandelier.

Just Christmas stuff at Mia's place.

Jacobim paid plenty of attention to the cooking.

Food.

A very mature picture I drew a while ago and put on the refridgerator, 'cause I'm nice. God Jul means Merry Christmas. That's a turd, not a croissant.

More food.

Miranda getting something wrong in a game on her new Hello Kitty computer.

My face. Hello.

Jacobim opening his present. It was a bone.

Miranda with the Jedward cd I gave her.

We went low key with the gifts this year, but I still recieved the following:

A pair of mittens, a scented candle, home-made Christmas treats and two of those under-bed box thingies with wheels that I wanted from my mother.

An ink cartridge (for my previously untested printer that I hope will turn out to be good enough for sellable prints) from dad.

Interview With The Vampire on dvd and a promise of a book about Hedward when it is delivered from Mia and Anders.

I had also ealier gotten some stuff in the mail; The Nightmare Before Christmas on dvd + a snazzy octopus tote bag + wolf pin from Zyzanna (Thank you so much! I intend to send you something other than cards in return, I just haven't gotten around to it yet because I suck, sorry!) and two Charles Bukowski books from my favouritest spidermonkey Jenn. <3

Also, today I got an extra present; a Daily Deviation over at DeviantArt! Always a happy surprise.

A cheesy Christmas greeting to you all!

2011-12-24T21:28:00.000+01:00

My Christmas tree looks like psychedelic vomit.

Have a good one*, everyone!

*"one" = Christmas if you celebrate it or Day/evening/whatever if you don't!

2011-12-22T02:50:00.001+01:00

Today I didn't go to my counselor/whatever meeting because I didn't want to. I sort of lost some trust in her last time I saw her. Without going into too much detail; she asked me some detailed questions she had no reason whatsoever besides personal morbid curiosity to know the answers to, and I found this to be most unprofessional of her. Had she said "I'm sorry, I just get so curious, but would you mind telling me about this and this?" I wouldn't really have minded since I'm a bit of a blabbermouth anyway, but she didn't, and that really rubbed me the wrong way. I have a really hard time with people who have jobs that deal with possibly sensitive issues who can not keep their own crap in check. If they are THAT curious about something they can friggin' google it like the rest of us. I had overslept that day and was too tired and sleepheaded at the time to really call her out on it, so I just gave some vague answer.

Overall I just don't get the feeling she has much to offer me in terms of advice. I have seen her quite a few times now, and while I don't dislike her I just don't get anything from our conversations, so I don't really want to see her anymore. To be honest I'm not sure what she does there. According to the clinic's website she's a nurse and not a counselor or a shrink of any kind, so I'm a bit confused as to why she has been assigned to me.

But ummm yeah. I got to fill out some bipolarity test paper anyway, and she said according to that it is quite probable that I am somewhere on the bipolar spectrum, and got me an appointment with a doctor who will investigate this further and maybe give me mood stabilizers.

However right now I feel absolutely fine, which always complicates things. I know I have been perfectly fine many times before, and therefor declined treatment because obviously I was cured, so... Things feel a bit different though, but this isn't the first time I have said that, so I don't really know how much of it to trust. This past year has been better than the ones before it, depression-wise. I had my worst one ever last winter, but after that I have felt pretty good most of the time, with only a few short depressive episodes, and I have come a long way with a lot of deep-rooted issues and faulty thinking. Recently I started doing some meditation/visualisation exercises daily, and I have decided what I really want to do with my life, and worked out a plan how to get there. I have realized a shitload of ways I have worked against myself in the past, and I think I know how to stop doing that in the future. I mean, I was already aware of my self sabotage in some areas, but holy craptits Batman, I didn't know how many areas of my life it really affected.

So, I don't know. I feel really positive about things, but not in a hyper kind of way. I guess I will just keep doing my exercises and keep on this track until I see the doctor in January, and if I'm still feeling as good as I do now I might put off starting meds to see if I can manage without them if I can stick to the methods I have learned to keep myself steady.

I'm mostly worried about losing my fits of extreme joy. I don't mean the longer periods that I suspect are hypo mania, but the little bursts of glee that make me dance and run instead of walking, or that make it difficult to keep myself from laughing out loud at something ridiculous even if I'm alone at the grocery store, or like today at work when I felt so tremendously happy that we had gotten Jedward's new(ish) cd in and that I could listen to it that I was actually a tad concerned I would physically explode in a cloud of heart confetti, and had to work really hard on calming myself down to not scare the customers. That would be so fucking sucky to lose. Those moments are my favourite things.

Buuuut, on the other hand, meds might be worth it if I'm going to have to pay for those moments with far more long term periods of depression that make it difficult if not impossible for me to make longterm plans or really get anywhere. So, I don't know. I'm not really bothered by the risk of meds ruining my libido since quite frankly it's annoyingly over-active as it is, causing me quite a bit of frustration. I might actually appreciate it calming down a bit.

There, another unexpectedly long winded post about my brain. You know you love it.

Also, for the record: I have wanted to do more Phoot Story Time posts, but since I decided that paying for my personal Flickr account was a waste of money a while ago and stopped doing so I no longer have easy access to my old photos. Maybe soon I will go on an excursion into my old computer and excavate some gems from the caves of its dinosauresque innards.

Recent photos and Christmas present babble

2011-12-21T01:09:00.000+01:00

Today I went Christmas shopping. I'm not exchanging many gifts this year, only with my immediate family (minus the brothers since I wn't be seeing them). I bought one present for Mia, two presents for myself, and one for dad that I really want for myself, and I'm mostly buying it so I can enjoy it too, haaahaaaa. I'm a nice person!

Work is getting hectic because of the Christmas shopping. It's quite nice when there's a lot of stuff going on, time moves faster and you get into a nice sort of flow. If it weren't for all the rude stressed out people who act like the world will end if they can't get that particular dvd in time for Christmas it's pretty much all enjoyable. I automatically go into an extremely service-minded and pleasant mode around Christmas. As much as I have my issues with consumerism and the compulsiveness of it all it's still sort of heartwarming to see so many people care about getting the right gifts for their loved ones. And like yeah. I'm basically Buddy The Elf this time of year.

This was me today. Serious pug cheek action! Also: sleepy eyes.

This was an authentic expression, but I can't remember what caused it. I was not eating lemons.

Ummm yeah... I'm slightly obsessed with looking in through windows. Perhaps my own in particular. It always looks so cosy inside when you are out in the dark. So that's why you get this absolute gem of a photo.

My stitches! Every time I do something so the wound stings I pretend I am Harry Potter and that I am catching glimpses of Voldemort's mind. Because, you know, I'm a cool person. I have done it so much that now I automatically go "Voldemort!" instead of "ouch!"

That's... pretty sad now that I see it written down.

Lucia celebration at Miranda's daycare center last week. It was the bomb. I was prepared to die from love seeing a gaggle of kids all dressed up and singing, but I didnt even look at the other kids at all because I had to stare at Miranda with big aunty heart eyes. When I did look around me I saw dad,Miranda's dad and her grandmother having the exact same heart eyes. It's pretty interesting how much you can love a kid that isn't even yours. I had no idea about it until Miranda came along. She's just so cool and weird and hilarious and beautiful.

Dad to the left. Getting her to put the crown on even for photos was veeeery difficult, because apparently it was unbarably itchy.

This is from a while ago. I only find this post-worthy because I am wearing pink lipstick instead of my usual red. How exciting. That would be Naomi next to me, and her car around me.

Art survey from Juli.

2011-12-15T22:13:00.004+01:00

1. When did you get into art?
I just didn't stop painting the way most kids do when they get older. I have never had a period in my life when I didn't paint, and I always enjoyed looking at other people's art.

2. What art-related sites have you ever signed up for?
Um, more than I recall now, surely. It started with Elfwood anyway. Art Attack! Deviant Art. Unsure if I ever got on Epilogue or if I thought it seemed too snobbish or some such nonsense. Art Wanted... I don't know. Stuff!

3. Show us your oldest piece of art you have on hand.

Not sure when I made this, but I'm guessing I was eleven or so. (Sorry for the huge image, I can't be arsed resizing.)

4. What defines your artistic style?
Feels like someone else should answer this... The way I see it I have four slightly different categories of pictures that continuously bleed into each other. I would say they are Real Faeries, Childrens Book Illustration Type Things, Lulzy Cats and Moody Dark Stuff Often With Hints of Sex And/Or Violence. I haven't done much of the fourth lately, which kind of bugs me because they are the ones that are most emotional.

A lot of the time I draw things that I myself think of as purely dreamy, and then other people look at it and think it's nightmarish. :) I remember doing an Heaven/Hell art assignment in school, and everyone mistaking my version of heaven for hell. :D A surprising amount of grown up people find even my cute faerie pictures scary! I can't say that doesn't please me. I like there to be something vaguely disturbing or off about all my pictures. (Except the cats, They're just plain cute.)

5. Do you practice other styles/have you tried other styles in the past?
I used to do more drawings and ink doodles and stuff, now it's extremely rare that I draw something I do not end up painting.

6. What levels of artistic education have you had?
Just the obligatory classes in school.

7. Show us at least one picture you drew or sketched recently that you did not put on a public site.

Okay, so this is like a year old or something, but anyway.

8. What is your favourite piece that you have done?

9. What is your least favourite piece that you have done?
Nothing I still have around!

10. What do you like most about your art?
The variety in faces and bodies and facial expressions. The colours.

11. What do you like least about your art?
The lack of decent backgrounds. That a lot of my pictures look too much alike. That it's a bit too posed and not as dynamic as I would want. Sometimes it feels plain pointless.

12. Have you ever considered taking commissions?
I have done it lots. I am very bad at handling the pressure to make something good enough, and pretty much always end up wishing I hadn't agreed to it, hating myself for my lack of self disciplin, and not feeling it was worth whatever I asked for it. Doesn't exactly help that I always undercharge. But I won't do this in the future!

13. Are you looking to pursue a career in art?
Yes and no. I'm currently trying to understand exactly what it is I want. I'll write more about this later once I have it all figured out!

14. What do you like drawing the most?
Humans, humanoids, animals and some plants. Faces and female torsos are my favourite human bits.

15. What do you like drawing the least?
Backgrounds. I have some serious mind blockage when it comes to doing backgrounds that give my paintings depth. I can't get into my head that I do not have to draw every single blade of grass or every single little rock, and then I end up giving up on the whole thing because it seems too daunting.

I used to hate drawing hands and feet like almost everyone else, but now I quite enjoy hands and can tolerate doing feet, even though I still need to work on the latter.

16. Do you draw more fanart or original art? If fanart, what fandom do you draw the most of?
Original art. I sometimes do portraits of people I find inspiring; mostly musicians. Once in a blue moon do some illustration to a book I like, but that's very rare.

17. What would you absolutely refuse to draw?
I can imagine drawing anything if there was a good reason to.

18. What is your purpose for drawing?
Getting to say "This is what is in my brain! Look!" and having other people go "OMG that's in my brain too!" or "Wow, that was never in my brain before now. THANKS A LOT FOR RUINING MY POOR INNOCENT BRAIN I HATE YOU NOW KBAI".

19. What medium/program do you use the most in your art?
Watercolour, acrylics and various pencils.

20. How would you rank your art? (poor, mediocre, good, etc.)
Compared to what? That's an impossible question without anything to relate it to.

21. Do you believe there is such thing as “bad art?”
I want to say "no, whatever floats your boat" and be all openminded and accepting and zen and crap but oh dear lord in heaven there are some atrocious things out there, and I do sometimes get quite upset that some of those things get what in my mind is undeserved attention. It mostly bugs me when things are sloppy and poorly made and you can tell there has been no thought or effort put into them.

22. List at least one of your “artspirations.”
Brian Froud. (Duh.)

23. What do you think you could stand to improve on?
Backgrounds, male anatomy, dynamic poses, fabric, learning to make my lines less defined and everything more fluid, putting more emotion into it. Overall just experimenting more.

24. Do you have a shameful art past? (recolour sprite comics, tracing art, etc.)
Not that I consider shameful, no.

I am injured!!!

2011-12-15T16:27:00.001+01:00

Finally decided to take on the mammoth task of cleaning my kitchen late last night in the company of Naomi. Broke a glass trying to clean it, making a small but rather deep cut on my right hand index finger knuckle. It bled quite a bit. Considering the rather exposed placement of the cut and the fact that I am a very slow healer we decided I might need some stitches, so Naomi kindly drove me to the hospital where I was taken care of by an awesome funny badass-looking flirtily bossy nurse that we both fell in love with. Three stitches! I have never had any before so the stitches themselves are pretty exciting, but today my hand just hurts a lot and I can't pick up heavy things or open bottles, and that's not exciting at all, only annoying. And I can't even see the stitches under the bandages. >:/

But the nurse might still have been worth it. Such a dreamboat.

Slow

2011-12-12T02:44:00.003+01:00

I have noticed that my lightbulb moments are never really unexpected.

It almost always takes me a long time to truly realize things about myself. It's kind of hard to explain... It's like I can walk around with quite advanced suspicions for ages before I suddenly one day fully realize they are very true indeed. I don't know, maybe it works like this for other people too; maybe it's just in movies or whatever that people's moments of self discovery are completely unexpected. ut I can't help but feel that these preceding inklings kind of ruin the "aha!"s and replace them with "well, duh"s, especially when I want to talk about my amazing new discoveries with other people. They're all "Well, you have talked about that for like three years" and I'm all "BUT NOW I KNOW IT'S TRUE, OKAY?" and feel a bit embarrassed by my slowness. I spend so much time analysing my own emotions that it feels like it shouldn't take me as long as it does to figure things out.

I suspect this means I should just lay off the constant self analysis because it doesn't really speed up my emotional development anyway. I would probably reach the same conclusions at approximately the same time without the constant navel gazing, and save a lot of time and energy in the process.

There. Cryptic blog post of the day: done.

3 Pet Peeves in Movies

2011-12-11T00:52:00.001+01:00

1. Wild rats that are not brown. With an exception for the extremely rare albino ones all wild rats are brown. How can no one in an entire film crew know this?! And if they know, how can they not care?! THIS IS IMPORTANT STUFF. Every time I see supposedly wild rats that are hooded or spotted or white or beige in a film I sigh and think the film makers are total n00bz or really sloppy.

2. A diabetic faints, and people go "QUICK! Get her/his insulin!" It's extremely uncommon to faint from insulin deficiency, and far more likely to faint from too much insulin. I have been diabetic for 22 years now and I have been absolutely terrible at taking my insulin at times, and my blood sugar has been too high for my blood test machine thing to even register it countless times, but the only immediate reactions I have ever experienced have been nausea, headache, extreme thirst, fatigue and irritability. I have, however, fainted quite a few times from having taken too much insulin, and if someone had given me more at that point they might have killed me. What I need then is sugar, fast.

3. Snow not being particularly cold. Keeping a window open or walk around in a nightgown or a t-shirt when it's snowing is Very Very Cold, not A Tad Chilly. It causes shaking and teeth chattering! The average person can't stand around without proper clothes on and chat casually in a snowfall! Put some friggin' clothes on or at least show some signs of it being cold!

Yours?

Cady, will you please tell him his hair looks sexy pushed back?

2011-12-08T21:44:00.001+01:00

Four months left until I am allowed to cut my hair, and it's DRIVING ME NUUUUUUTS ARRGRGRHRGHRGRHGRHGH! It's too long now to look good when just slightly messy, and I am trying to find some other way to wear it. I've been doing some kind of semi-rockabillyesque type thing, and while it does feel acceptable I can't quite shake the feeling of mulletness, since it's a bit too long in the back. (Nothing against mullets, mind you! I one of the rare genuine non-ironic mullet enthusiasts out there, but this is not a nice kind of mullet.)

I can't wait to cut the sides and back! I keep seeing people with fantastic short nicely trimmed dos and it HURTSSS USSS. But it will be so nice when I do get to cut it, I'm going to have like... an actual HAIRSTYLE. some kind of proper... thing! I have never really had that, if you don't count my hawks.

It's alright from the front, though the sideburny bits are a bit long. But I shall not cut even those, nosireebob!

SRSFACE.

Before I took this I was all "Okay, I'm NOT going to do some stupid pose now, I'll just... stand. All natural and shit." And then I did this. Facepalm. You can pretend the feathers behind me are part of my hair. If you're into that kind of thing I mean... Whatever floats your boat.

This blog entry is brought to you by RANDOM CAPS!!!!!!!!!

VERY IMPORTANT

2011-12-08T00:30:00.000+01:00

The one to the far right is my personal fav.

New paintings: Christmas cats on eBay

2011-12-06T22:29:00.002+01:00

Three new art cards up on eBay. Click the pictures to get to the auctions! I'll be donating 10% of any profit to WWF.

Also up for auction is the Roasting Marshmallows original I'm selling postcards of.

Dålig svenska

2011-12-04T16:57:00.000+01:00

I am quite appalled by how bad my Swedish is nowadays. Almost everything I read, listen to and write is in English, so I have started thinking in English at least half the time, probably more. It's fine when it's about stuff I plan to write in English, but I find myself imagining future conversations with other Swedish people being had in English as well, and that's just weird. I constantly have to remind myself that no, I will NOT be saying what I just thought about saying, because I will be speaking SWEDISH.

Naomi and I challenged ourselves a while ago to use no English phrases or words that have a Swedish equivalent for one day. I fucked up 22 times, and that was when I was actively trying not to! (I think Naomi did it 11 times, but to be fair: I talk a lot more than she does.) I rarely have to look up what things are called in English anymore, but find myself going "What the HELL is the Swedish word for that!?" quite often. It's a bit weird.

I think I just like English more. The words usually feel more poignant, or sometimes more vague in a useful way, and there are so many expressions that are so spot on but do not work if translated. Still it's a bit embarrassing to be so bad at my first language, especially since I used to be really good at it! I should start writing in Swedish as practice.

Cafepress

2011-12-03T01:59:00.000+01:00

After a gazillion katrillion years I am back on Cafepress! There are shirts, mugs, pet bowls and even some underwear available with my pictures on them. Go have a look, thankyouplease!

If you find any inconsistensies in pricing, please let me know! I haven't gotten the hang of everything just yet. Also, if you have any requests for more items or different pictures I'd be happy to oblige (as long as the pictures work on your desired item!

New painting: Stealing a Lussebulle (and an old gingerbread goblin)

2011-12-02T10:56:00.000+01:00

New card motif! They are stealing a Lussebulle, a Swedish sweet bun made in specific shapes with saffron and raisins which is very popular around Christmas here.

The third new card motif is this old gingerbread goblin!

Get the cards here! Make sur to order soon if you want them delivered in time to send them out in time!

Getting into the Christmas spirit

2011-12-01T23:00:00.000+01:00

Today has been spent watching the Grinch, and listening to Neil Gaiman read his excellent The Graveyard Book whilst tidying up, cleaning the rat cage and putting up my Christmas tree and other decorations. Also: I have dried figs, dark mint chocolate and an orange. All is well in Leroyland this evening.

Edward and John. Edward has gotten absolutely huge, it's awesome! He's like a fat sassy loaf of juicy bread, all heavy and good! He looks like a super model. John isn't bad either, but he's not as fat.

The tree.

Advent star and Christmas jaws. Very traditional.

My desk is unusually cluttered at the moment, but I really like it since I'm being all cosy and shit.

OMG DARRYL

2011-11-30T09:09:00.001+01:00

Instead of sorting out my sleeping schedule as planned I decided it was a good idea to watch all available episodes of the second season of The Walking Dead in a row tonight. I did the same thing with the whole first season. Two nights in a row. Ahem. So now it's almost 9 am. Oh dear. But like, you guys, Darryl. I love him so much. I am also constantly struggling against the raging hardon I have for Shane even though he's... yeah. I don't know why I have it. I am ashamed. Or not really, but you know.

I like it when movies and TV series make me panic vaguely and exclaim things and actually drop my jaw since I'm kind of a cartoon character. I gasped with shock, got up from my chair and left the room dramatically at something on The Walking Dead tonight, haaahaaaa. My poor nerves.

Ummm yeah. Have a random picture! This is me and my very round and very shaved head at the awesome theme park Efteling in the Netherlands last year. Or was it the year before? I don't remember. I do remember these fantastic barrels though.

I guess I'm going to bed now... even though that feels really wrong at nine in the morning.

Lisis' Wishlist 2011

2011-11-28T21:36:00.004+01:00

I pretty much avoid giving and receiving Christmas presents nowadays, but I do turn 30 in exactly one month, and there are some things I want. Second hand things preferred! These are them:

~~A good printer~~ - Turned out dad has one I can use!
A drawing table
A bus pass for as long a period as possible, or just bus tickets
Pvc Demonia Mega 618 boots (7½-8 men's or 8½-9 women's)
Two of those flat boxes with lids and wheels that go under the bed
A very large plant that doesn't die easily
Charles Bukowski books
DVDs: OMG! It's Jedward, The Mighty Boosh Live, Interview With The Vampire, Beetlejuice, ~~Nightmare Before Christmas~~ (Thanks, Zuzanna!) :D

New painting: Roasting Marshmallows

2011-11-28T04:57:00.001+01:00

My mum, sister and one of my brothers insisted that I had more holiday cards printed, and even offered to finance it since I'm pretty damn broke. So go them! Here is one of the new motifs.

Oh yeah, and the cards now have their own tab ^ up there ^!

Phoot Story Time: Cybergoth & Little Brother

2011-11-25T00:45:00.000+01:00

There isn't much of a story to this, really. Or any story at all. It's me dressed as some kind of cybergoth for whatever reason, with a misplaced yellow cotton dress, and Johanna looking like the 11 year old little brother I never had. Unsure when this is from, but it was quite a while ago.

Mostly I just wanted to update and say that I am feeling a whole lot better today. Will be interesting to see if I switch over to hyper mode now or remain calm. I'm actually expecting the first since I have been jittery in a special way today, but we'll see. Anything is better than being depressed.

Keeping it cheerful! More depression/bipolarity babble.

2011-11-23T05:21:00.002+01:00

To keep with the recent upbeat feel of this blog I will now tell you how I am feeling at the moment.

There's something depressionish going on. I don't feel 100% down, but it's not good. Like my last depression fit this summer this one came at me extremely fast. Basically took me a single day to get from perfectly okay to not going to see Peaches DJ and perform at a club, which was something I had been looking forward to for weeks and even bought new shoes for. It was a pretty big deal, okay?! I love Peaches! But no, I couldn't do it because I had to devote my night to staying in bed feeling guilty and hopeless and hate myself with the power of a thousand suns.

This is my current state: I am pointless and boring and I don't understand how anyone could possibly enjoy my company. I am selfish and self-absorbed and have nothing to offer. So I hide away as much as possible. I wish I could just disappear, but that would be too dramatic and leave people puzzled, so I would rather have never existed at all. With no ties to anyone I could just cease to exist without any consequences. And as usual the truly bothering bit is how completely rational it all feels. Like I have discovered the truth, and there isn't really much to do about it. It's a strange feeling. I have taught myself to remember that this is how depression makes me feel, and I am trying to stick to that as much as I can, but it's a bit like thinking the knowledge of a cold would make your nose stop running. It doesn't. I have extreme difficulties doing the simplest things, unless someone else depends on that I do it. I go to work because I have said I will. I take Jacobim for walks because he is my dog, but they are not long, and I feel really shit about him not getting a satisfying amount of exercise because I can't get myself to leave my bedroom. I would hire a freaking dog walker if I could afford it.

I feel an intense need to talk/write about how I am feeling, yet I hate myself for doing it. I don't want people to worry about me, or feel obliged to talk to me or respond or comment or listen or read or whatever, but at the same time I know that even though I have been depressed before and made it out alive it's still a very serious condition and I shouldn't be all "Oh, I'm fine! No problem!" about it. Plus I also both want attention and don't want it at all. That's possibly what is most annoying. I feel so very lonely and I can't help but wish more people cared enough to check up on me, but at the same time I completely understand why they don't, and I don't want anyone to do something they don't want to do, so for that reason I don't want them to. It's all very stupid and whiny and messy, but it's how I feel. I have to look at it as something out of my control, or else I get nauseous just thinking about what a whiny spoiled bitch I am. I do feel slightly sick just writing this, and I know I will beat myself up for posting it in a bit. But if I didn't I would find something else to beat myself up for, perhaps for being a coward, so you know...

Here's one of my favourite quotes on the subject. I have probably posted it before.

"One of the many things I hate about the word “depression” is the assumption of blankness attached to it, as if the experience of depression is as absent on the inside as it looks to be from the outside. That is wrong. Depression is a place that teems with nightmarish activity. It’s a one-industry town, a psychic megalopolis devoted to a single twenty-four-hour-we-never-close product. You work misery as a teeth-grinding muscle-straining job (is that why it’s so physically exhausting?), proving your shameful failures to yourself over and over again. Depression says you can get blood from a stone, and so that’s what you do."

Lesley Dormen

Let's talk self diagnoses!!! I have moved from thinking I have Cyclothymia to being almost certain I have Bipolar II, or something in between the two. I have been reading up on it lots and I have almost all the symptoms, and I took another online test for it and scored very high again. I have been looking back a lot and thought about my behaviour and moods the last few years and found several periods that seem an awful lot like hypomania, even though at the time I just thought I had finally found my real self, and that I would now be unstoppable and energetic forever. This, according to what I have read, is extremely common, and one of the reasons it's such a difficult thing to diagnose. I know that when a shrink I saw asked me a lot of obviously bipolarity-related questions I was all "BITCH PLEASE, don't even go there. I don't get MANIC!" and now I'm like "...oh."

Also, most my depressions were not long or severe enough to count as "real" depressions, though I have had those too, and that also fits the Bipolarity II bill very well. I also have reason to suspect that some of my relatives have or have had it too. I have talked to some of them and they believe so too.

I can also think of quite a few bits of my life that seem like mixed state episodes.

I know I'm taking this and running with it, maybe I'm just making shit up and am not anywhere on the bipolar spectrum, but I really don't think so. I have always had a feeling that there was something not quite right. I never felt like I could find a place to put my feet down for any length of time. I feel stable for a few weeks tops, then I usually slide down, or occasionally sore up, am gone for another few weeks, then go back to feeling calm and stable. Because of this constant fluctuation I can never really get anywhere. I have a hard time understanding how people can stick to things, commit to things long term. How they can buy a house or have a full time job or even just get an education. The most long term thing I have ever done was to get a dog, and to be honest I can barely handle that. I don't let myself plan ahead because I have absolutely no idea how I will feel next week, or even tomorrow, if I will be super positive and energetic, or want to die, or both, or neither. I have very little solid ground to build on.

I used to think this was a self confidence issue. Or actually, I thought all my problems were rooted in my rocky self confidence. But the last couple of years have been really eye-opening for me, and the stable me is actually more or less free from the insecurities I used to spend so much time and energy on in the past, and that's why my last downfall this summer was so shocking to me, because as soon as I fell I ran back and picked all of those issues back up again. And I felt that it wasn't right, I didn't believe the thoughts I was having, yet I couldn't stop them. A very odd experience. I have felt the same for a very long time, though on a much lesser scale. Only in my very deepest darkest depression did I really believe all the self deprecating thoughts I had, at all other times there was a slight feeling of disbelief to it, like I was in a nightmare that I knew was just a nightmare, yet I couldn't wake up. I could feel the strange obsessiveness of it, that it wasn't real. I felt like the real me was standing next to my insecure self, shaking my real head at how stupid insecure-I was for buying into my own bullshit. Um, yeah, I'm sure that made a lot of sense... I guess my point is that I have done all I can by myself, and since apparently this is not enough I need help, possibly partly from medication.

I have always been pretty in tune with my emotions in one way, even though I quite often misinterpret them or take ages to understand what they mean. Basically I can tell when something is wrong even if I haven't figured out what is RIGHT, you know? I can locate the faulty area pretty easily, but I can't always solve the problem right away. And umm... Yeah. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, I can tell the difference between real shitty self confidence, and depression induced shitty self confidence, and I do not think I am involved with the first anymore. I used to be insecure even during my calm "normal" periods, but now I am not. I feel like I know what my base self looks like now, but I can't make use of this knowledge and build things on it because I know it's only a matter of time before a depression comes and tears it down, or before I get hyper and decide to build an over sized tower shaped like a rabbit god on one corner so the whole thing crumbles. It's hard to build something really good when you have to start over every other week or month, even if you have great materials, which I think I do.

I don't mind the hypomania, if that is what my super energetic episodes have been. It's enjoyable. Sometimes it's frustrating because I can't get all my energy or ideas out, and people look at me funny, but I still feel strong and free and invincible, and I get a lot of things done. But it doesn't feel worth it anymore. I would prefer to have some kind of firm ground. It doesn't have to be perfect, I would probably get bored of perfect, but I would like to feel like I could at least have a reasonable idea how I will feel a week from now so I could make more extensive plans than going to England in so and so many months, or going to a party in three weeks.

Anyway. I have called the brain doctor place and am hoping to hear from my contact there soon. She is just a nurse so she won't be able to diagnose me or give me drugs, but she is the only one there so far that I have liked, and I can ask her if she can hook me up with some other shrink than the one I had before and didn't get along with. I need to get this shit sorted. I need to get on with my stupid life.

Went down fast.

2011-11-22T03:56:00.000+01:00

The desire to disappear.

Autumn leaves

2011-11-21T20:43:00.000+01:00

I will now post some photos of autumn leaves from a while ago to distract myself from feeling self conscious and stupid about posting such personal things earlier, but also mention why I'm doing it, thus completely ruining the whole distraction idea. Maybe I should write a whole post about this.

Anyway. Lalala pretty leaves.

Do note that these are not autumn leaves.

S to the U to the B to the FRENZY!

2011-11-19T21:33:00.003+01:00

Having a bit of an annoying night. I should be writing for my book but I'm too jittery. I can't focus on writing anything with a strict outline (like actual past events, in the case of my book).

BDSM babble after the cut!

The combination of failed evening plans, premenstrual over-emotionality and a severe fit of sub frenzy is driving me nuts. Or really it's general kink frenzy, since I foolishly indulged the switch in me by looking at a whole lot of male submission photos earlier. DID NOT HELP.

It's really interesting to me; sub frenzy. It's probably the one BDSM-related thing that has floored me the most when it comes to recognizing myself in it. Or one of them, anyway. I have for as long as I remember had re-occurring Bad Nights. I always just thought of them as depression-related, but now I'm pretty sure most of them were undiagnosed fits of sub frenzy. I have spent countless nights (and sometimes days) spent being extremely frustrated and jittery and unable to figure out what the hell it was I so badly wanted. Or well, actually no, a lot of the time I had an idea that I wanted something violent and sexual, but it still didn't make sense to me that it was such a strong desire when I didn't even identify as kinky. And trying to satiate the need with vanilla sex just made it even worse. It felt like it was supposed to do the trick, but then it didn't, and everything just felt hopeless, like I wanted something that didn't exist. I put the whole thing off as general self-destructive behaviour, which didn't feel right but was the only thing I could think of, until I found the term sub frenzy and things fell into place.

So far I haven't done anything very bad during my frenzies (except for possibly making a fool of myself trying to get people to fight me). I guess I should thank my cowardice/shitty self confidence for that, as well as my being extremely selective when it comes to play partners. If it weren't for that I would probably done some very thoughtless stuff that could have gotten me into serious trouble.

It's a weirdly powerful thing, this desire. I don't know anything like it. It's kind of absurd. I just want this frustration beaten out of me.

I do believe I shall go buy cigarettes even though I told myself I shouldn't. I have to do something to put myself at some kind of ease. OH WELL.

Connecting the dots

2011-11-17T01:12:00.000+01:00

I'm writing, but quite slowly, mostly because I keep finding myself going back to re-write things and remove bits, when really I should just be word-vomiting until I have the 50.000 words down, and then go back to edit stuff. I'm at 17.566. I was further ahead earlier, but cut some stuff out. I was aiming for 20.000 today but I doubt I will make it.

Describing defining moments and events of your life in a way that makes sense to other people really forces you to look at things objectively and separate the irrational way you have been looking at things from the actual truth you want to communicate. I recommend it to anyone who doesn't know what the fuck they are feeling half the time! It's like I have found the common denominators of all the weird stuff I have been going through because I have been forced to look for them to make a coherent story. I keep going "WOAH, that's why I felt that way, I had no idea!" A game of conneting the emotional dots.

Sooo yeah. Right now I'm feeling like maybe this isn't all that interesting to other people, perhaps this is just a form of therapy and not really book material. But whatever, it's cool, I'm getting something out of it at least! And I'm thinking that if, in the end, it turns out it's not really good enough as a story to share with others, then I can use it as a base for another future book that isn't autobiographical but still deals with the same subjects, just in a cleaner, more poignant way.

Best Of Leroy's Dreams

2011-11-15T01:00:00.000+01:00

I have extremely vivid and absurd dreams, and am lucky enough to remember most of them. I regularly wake up laughing, crying, or even singing. They often involve celebrities; often ones I have little or no feelings for whatsoever. Why that is I do not know. I realize most people are bored to death by other people's dream stories, but since I have been told mine are actually properly entertaining I have decided to make this Best Of Leroy's Dreams entry.

These are all taken from my old secret blog, most of them are a few years old.

I also have über-creepy nightmares and dreams with embarrassingly obvious symbolism, but they aren't as entertaining.

So, I welcome you to my subconscious mind.

Me, friend Niclas, sister Mia, dad and Bon Jovi were eating cake and drinking coffe behind a house in the forest here. We were just chatting away when Bon Jovi suddenly said that the big sports arena thing in town had been burned to the ground. Niclas and I were all "DAMNIT" because apparently it was the weekend of the big annual sports arena flea market, and we really wanted to go. We decided to go check it out anyway, but when we got there we saw that it was not burned down at all! We went back to the house in the woods where Bon Jovi and dad were still hanging out, and we were all "Bon Jovi, it's not burned down at all, why did you say it was?" but he had nothing to say for himself.

Alfons (Mia's dog) had caught a cat, and was holding it in his front paws; about to slam it against a rock (?) when he stopped and said "You probably thought I was about to kill you, cat, but I am not as mean as you are. I just wanted to teach you a lesson."

This is one of my all time favourites:
Marilyn Manson was standing on my porch talking to someone and I was trying to get his attention and impress him with my awesome flying skills. I was spinning around in the air really fast, trying to act like I did that all the time, and wasn't just showing off. I kept looking through the corner of my eye to see if he was looking, but he wasn't. Instead he walked to the garage where he sat down and played a song on a sewing machine. It was a funny melody indeed.

A tiny blob-like slug thing crawled out from underneath the sewing machine, moving to the beat of the music. I asked Marilyn what it was, and he said that he didn't really know, but it appeared every time he played that song. The slug grew wings and started flying around, and suddenly it split into two slugs that flew around the air circling each other quite elegantly for a while.

Then they mated, and fell down into a big bowl of water, where they became really flat and then sort of exploded. I looked into the bowl, and on the surface I saw the reflection of some golf playing men.

"That's where golfers come from" Marilyn said."

I was watching a baby, or maybe it was my own baby, I'm not sure. But either way I was carrying the little lumpling around the mall. I went up to the second floor and there I found someone I knew sitting on the floor, all sad. I tried to cheer whoever it was up but to no avail.

Then Thomas DiLeva turned up with his guitar to cheery my friend up with a new song of his, but it it wasn't a very happy song, and there was just something very sad about Thomas as well. I asked him what was wrong and he said that nothing was particularly good in his life at the moment and he just felt generally down. He left and went home. He lived in a flat on top of one of the stores at the mall. I was a bit concerned about both Thomas and my friend, but didn't know what to do.

Then I found an abandoned puppy that had gigantic eyes and nose like a cartoon, and it was the cutest thing I had ever seen. I picked it up and carried it around on my right arm, with the baby on my left. Suddenly the puppy started to whistle, and it was the loveliest most magical whistle in the world. The tune was so happy and clean and sparkly that my heart almost burst. I ran to the store over which Thomas' flat was and threw some kind of rubber object (?) against his window so he would come open it. When he did I said "Here is something to be happy about!" and the puppy started whistling again, and Thomas smiled and laughed and cheered right up.

The other night I had a dream about llamas in squirrel suits frolicking by the river.

First I was at some night club, and saved a girl from being raped outside it. Then I brought her home with me, and showed her around my garden and informed her that Peter Pan actually lived somewhere around there, and that he had taught me how to fly. I flew around a bit to show her, and explained that if you farted mid-flight the glowing fairy dust that trailed behind you got all cloudy and hazy. XD XD XD I was very cocky about flying and kept going "Look at this!" and "Check this out!" and started wondering if perhaps the flying itself was the source of Peter Pan's cockiness.

Part of a dream: I decided to stay in the restaurant/park when the rest of my posse gleefully went to outer space to fight an army of some sort. "You go on without me" I said "I will stay here and photograph the man-sized crocuses and hope none of the waiters notice I haven't ordered anything".

One of my more disturbing ones:
I was sitting in a corridor next to an old man who looked quite a bit like Marty Feldman. He was sitting under a yellow blanket, and at first he was nice to me, but then an apple of mine disappeared. I looked over and saw him looking all smug and full of evil glee and realized my apple must be somewhere under his blanket, and I had a feeling it was an unpleasant somewhere. I decided to just get a new apple and never think of where the first one might have ended up ever again.

Then my drawing pad went missing... I looked all over but couldn't find it. Then I looked at the man and found him lying under his blanket with a tortured sex-face on; his legs spread wide, and I saw the contours of my poor poor drawing pad being rubbed against his crotch. (WHY, BRAIN, WHY!?! Though I guess I should be thankful for the censoring blanket.) So, I killed him. I kicked him and punched him until he was dead, and it felt very satisfying.

I dreamed that Noel Fielding had two faces; one on the front of his head and one on the back. This was so he could rock two haircuts at once. I found this very clever of him.

I dreamed that I was on a date with Swedish comedian Henrik Schyffert. We were sitting by a table somewhere, and he suddenly picked up a tube of black fabric paint from somewhere. He squeezed the content of it onto his palm; licked off a considerable amount of it, and then kissed me.

Then we laughed.

No longer a bird, or a proper Human Baby

2011-11-14T13:18:00.001+01:00

My favourite part of my favourite book; Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. Always related very strongly to this.

"Every fairy that Peter met, bolted like a frightened rabbit - some, one at a time, and some in a bunch. And he would hear them telling each other in squeaky voices that there was a Human Child in the Gardens after Lock Out Time: which was not allowed at all. It was enough to shock and startle any respectable fairy.

    The same thing happened with the birds. Directly Peter flew up to talk to them, they made unhappy squeakings and flappings, and were gone in a twinkling. He could not understand it all: but presently he thought of trying what could be spoken to in the island; and there he found old Solomon Caw, the raven, who was on guard with one eye open: it was a waste of time to use two, as nothing ever happened there. Peter told old Solomon about his adventures, and how the fairies and birds refused to know him. What could be the reason for such rudeness?

   "Look at yourself," said old Mr. Caw.

   Peter looked. "Well, what about it?" said he.

   Solomon repeated, "Sillykin! Baby! Booby! Why, you have a nightgown on and no feathers!"

   Too true: that's how it was: but Peter had never noticed it before. He had been much too excited.

   "Now look at the birds, " said old Solomon. "See any difference?"

   It was very plain to see. The birds (all sleeping soundly) were dressed exactly opposite: they had feathers and no nightgowns. Peter felt extremely worried. What was he to do? He seemed to remember a kind lady who had lived somewhere else, and who was covered much like himself - I mean, in a nightgown, without a single feather. He said, doubtfully, that he thought he would go back to Mother. But then he found, oh dear! - that he could no longer fly. He had used up all that was left of his flying - and now he would have to stay on the Island for always and always.

   He was no longer a bird, or a proper Human Baby: but only (as old Solomon wisely told him), "a Betwixt-and-Between."

Peter Pan in Kensington GardensJ.M. Barrie - retold by May Byron.

Going dancing

2011-11-13T22:13:00.001+01:00

Went out for a brief boogie with Naomi and Peter last night. First time I have been out dancing in a long time, and first time I have been out dancing sober (one glass of wine doesn't count) in even longer. It was quite nice. Then we went to my house and had tea and baked goods like true party animals.

Naomi looking purrdy.

Me and Naomi looking... something. My face is scary.

It's becming increasingly difficult for me to make a normal face in photos.

This seems to be the most normal I can muster.

Fur-Jedward and Peter are like... in loooove. Edward, John, Peter.

No ending

2011-11-13T18:00:00.000+01:00

Realized I have no ending to my book, and I can't really make one up since it's autobiographical, but I still want to write it. So I'm going to keep trying to reach 50.000 words this month, and unless something happens before Demember that will make a good ending I will just finish it when one appears. Maybe I'll wait until next November and make it a 100.000 words book instead!

Fire in the hole!

2011-11-11T15:00:00.004+01:00

They are building something next door, and using dynamite to blow up the rocky ground. There is a constant sound of heavy drilling, occasionally interrupted by someone yelling (the Swedish equivalent of) "Fire in the hole!", and then a massive literally earth-shattering BOOM.

I can't help but think of it as a fitting illustration to what is going on in my mind at the moment. I'm in the OH FUCK I HAVE BEEN WRONG ABOUT SO MANY THINGS FOR A MILLION YEARS place, and am constantly feeling like the ground below me is crumbling. I don't know where to find a solid place to stand and catch my breath, and I am struggling to not fall into a pit of shame at the way I have been acting and thinking, at how I have thought I was on top of things when really I didn't know squat.

So, yesterday I had what I believe was my first ever anxiety attack that was not embedded in a deep I'm-Staying-In-Bed-All-Day-Wanting-To-Die kind of depression. It was quite unexpected, and I'm still not entirely sure it was an anxiety attack, but I can't think of what else it might have been.

But you know what? I am still going to count this as being Awesome. I'm sorting through some crap in my head that I have left untouched before, and if that's going to manifest itself physically, then so be it. I'll have anxiety attacks daily if that's what it takes. At least I'm evolving. Or trying to evolve.

And on some strange level it was kind of... rewarding. I often feel a need to explode or break down, but I never do in any real sense because I have taught myself to always do my very best to appear in control, to appear calm, to not cause trouble and be a burden. Somewhere in the scariness of it I found a comfort in my body forcing me to have a good look at this stuff I have been avoiding really examining.

Whatever. Blah blah. I should be writing my book. New life rule anyway: No more acting on speculations regarding other people. No more thinking I know anything about anyone except what they have actually told me.

Cyclothymia

2011-11-10T17:59:00.001+01:00

I've had a sneaking suspicion for years now that I have cyclothymia/cyclothymic disorder (a milder form of bipolar disorder). I just scored "Extremely High" on an online test for it.

One of the shrinks I went to for my depression a couple of years ago seemed dead set on diagnosing me with bipolar disorder (after talking to me for about half an hour), but it didn't seem quite right to me since my moods don't last very long and are rarely extreme enough to cause any major problems.

But they do cause minor and sometimes medium and sometimes bordering on major problems, even though I don't like to admit it. I have a tendency to just be all "Oh I'm just impulsive and emotional, it's just my personality, no biggie!" but really, it's causing me quite a bit of internal and sometimes physical stress, and doesn't make my self confidence issues any easier to handle. So umm, yeah... Maybe that is major. It feels fantastic when I'm hyper, but even that is kind of getting to me, and the lows and most of all the fluctuation between the two are quite draining. It doesn't feel quite healthy to only feel unhyper or undepressed for a couple of days a month. So I'm once again considering some kind of mood stabilizers.

Does anyone have experience with cyclothymia? I can't find much information online other than lists of symptoms.

Renewing my vow!

2011-11-10T01:03:00.003+01:00

Sometime in the spring of 2010 I decided it was time to stop dilly-dallying and made a vow of Awesomeness.

I marked this momentous occasion by having Naomi carve an A onto my butt.

While I have been a considerably more Awesome since then I have taken many a detour. I cut myself some slack for the times I have been actually depressed since that's not really a condition Awesomeness flourishes in, but tonight I have come to realize that I have, in fact, also been dilly-dallying when I have not been depressed.

I spent the evening reading old journal entries from the last few years as highly self-absorbed research for my equally self-absorbed book. I was mainly just doing it to check some facts, but found myself absolutely baffled by the extremeness of the self-sabotage I have done by way of shitty self-confidence. I mean, I was aware I have been having some issues with it, but not until I read through it now do I realize just how narrow and inaccurate my view of things really were for a very long time, mostly before the Awesome vow, but after it as well. I have been letting out OH MY GODs, WHAT THE HELL WAS WRONG WITH ME?s and NO WONDER THINGS WERE MESSED UPs all night. My brain was surrounded by a thick wall of self confidence issues impenetrable to common sense and reason, and not only did this cause myself a shitload of unnecessary anguish, but it also fucked up my relationship with others. Not cool! I was looking at the wrong things through a looking glass while simultaneously wearing blinders to block out the right ones. Maybe if I had chosen a better spot for the A I would have done better, back there isn't the most ideal place for a reminder!

One thing I just realized is that had this been before I made the Awesome vow in 2010 I would probably have turned this epiphany into a reason to hate myself for having been stupid. I'm not doing that now. That's kind of the very essence of the Awesome I am talking about here, being able to forgive oneself and just... to not be an asshole to anyone, including oneself.

Anyway, I find it absolutely crucial that I do not do this again. So I hereby officially renew my vow to walk the road of Awesomeness. No more veering off into self doubt-land. That shit's so effing done, you guys.

Now, back to writing my book. (11220 words so far!)

THIS.

2011-11-08T01:44:00.000+01:00

“Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering.”
Paulo Coelho, By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Drop Dead Gorgeous

2011-11-06T03:45:00.000+01:00

Naomi laughs. Bim disturbs.

A survey

2011-11-05T17:14:00.001+01:00

1. Make a list of 5 things you can see without getting up:
A bottle of red nailpolish
A silver goblet with a teabag in it
Three chestnuts
A large plastic beetle
A spoon

2. How do you style your hair?
Wildly.

3. What are you wearing now?
Tight pants, socks, longsleeved t-shirt, oversized sweater. ALL BLACK LIKE MY SOUL.

4. What's your occupation?
Record store clerk, artist and king of the galaxy,

5. What do you hear right now?
Computer buzzing, key-tapping, house creaking.

6. Who was the last person you hugged?
Naomi.

7. What was/is for dinner?
I don't know, I am going to my sister's house for dinner.

8. What did you do today?
Thriftshop, sushi, nap.

9. What was the last text message you received?
"I'll take the 22.35 train. Meet me at the station?"

10. What websites do you always visit when you go online?
My e-mail, facebook, tumblr and flickr. There are some others I usually check also but these are the main ones.

11. What was the last thing you bought?
Besides boring food it was a shelf for my rat wonderland, a desk lamp and a scarf. All second hand.

12. If you could afford to go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
Australia and USA to visit people. England to visit people and look at stuff. Italy just 'cause.

13. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
I don't. I can't look ahead.

14. Where's your birthmark?
What, I can only have one now? I have many. Some on my scalp, some on my back, and the biggest one on my right inner thigh.

15. What are you doing this weekend?
I'm dedicating this weekend to my NaNoWriMo, eating things, headaches, naps and guilt. I'm a party animal.

16. If you could play any musical instrument, which one would you play?
Piano.

17. How are you?
Sleepy and headachey.

18. How much do you get paid?
I don't really know. I think ummm... A hundred and something kronor/hour.

19. What's the last thing you have regretted?
Being a drunken psycho bitch asshole and saying and writing things I didn't mean to someone I care greatly about. Has made me think about giving up alcohol altogether.

20. What quote do you live by?
I try to live by this:
It doesn't matter if the glass is half full or half empty. I am gonna drink it through this crazy straw!
(Courtesy of a softer world.)

Writing about writing again

2011-11-03T21:33:00.000+01:00

So I'm 4300 words into my novel, and I'm a bit unsure about the direction it is taking. I am writing an autobiography of sorts, snippets from my life that deal with sexuality, shame, love and self expression. I was thinking of adding some fictional elements, but so far I haven't, and I don't think I am going to, but it's becoming extremely personal and at places very dark, and I'm unsure if that's the way I want it to go. I feel like I'm walking the fine line between a refreshing kind of honesty and a painful cringeworthy kind.

Maybe I should just focus on the less touchy bits until I figure out where I am going with it.

So you can make me come, that doesn't make you Jesus

2011-11-02T20:48:00.000+01:00

I have conflicted feelings for Tori, but this song is pure brilliance. The lyrics are perfect and never fail to make me shudder with succinct delight.

Sudden NaNoWriMo!

2011-11-01T21:57:00.002+01:00

Last night I spontaneously decided it was time to write a book, so I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. I've been thinking about doing it for years but never got around to it. Not sure if I'll ever publicise any of it or not, I decided to take the scary road of autobiographical...ness. Kind of. Not sure how It'll turn out in the end, it might turn a bit fictional. I'm 1039 words in so far. (The goal is 50.000.)

So anyway, I might not write much here for a month!

The winner of a free custom painting is...

2011-10-31T16:53:00.002+01:00

Halloween is upon us, and so is the free custom painting result!

The winner iiiiiiissssssssssss....

Jo!

Let me know what you want me to paint for you, and I'll have it done by the end of November!
(You can e-mail me at liselotte@liselotteeriksson.com or just leave a comment here.)

Happy Halloween!

Submission.

2011-10-30T19:45:00.002+01:00

BDSM talk ahead, nothing particularly sexual, but skip if you don't want to know!

As I mentioned in a recent post I have always been embarrassed. My main causes for shame have been my need of attention, my keen interest in sex, and my dedication to and intense feelings for the objects of my love/lust. I have always been like this, I've always been extra in love, extra horny, extra smitten. And it's not just in my head, other people have noticed it too. I have had short periods of embracing my intensity, of seeing it as a strength, after all, think of how tame music and art and just culture in general would be without deeply passionate slightly obsessive people. Still, personally, I have been ashamed, and worried about intimidating people with it. It seems most people are uncomfortable with intensity, even in people they want to be wanted by. Understandable, I suppose, I guess most people feel a pressure to recipocrate, and if they don't then I understand that it feels a bit uneven. But it's still pretty sucky when you're a natural born ball of emotion who has a thing for that exact uneven-ness.

For a very long time I have assumed there was something wrong with the way I want to express love or desire. That there was something rotten underneath it that I was trying to divert attention from, or that my tendency to more or less worship the person I love or desire reflected badly on my self esteem somehow, that I wanted to grovel before them because I felt unworthy or worthless, yet that didn't feel right either. At the core of me I knew that wasn't it, that even though my self confidence is rocky at times it doesn't manifest itself in that way. It felt like a pure desire somehow, and I have always thought that there is value in all pure emotions, you just have to find the right time and place for them.

I also assumed what I should be searching for was someone who worshipped me back, an equal in obsessive love, to make it symmetrical. Yet whenever someone wants to put me on a pedestal I almost always immediately want to climb down, and even excessive compliments make me very uncomfortable. Never because I feel unworthy, or because it is scary, it just makes me feel terribly out of place. There are exceptions to this, people out there I would be happy to have admire me in that way, but even if I think I am a bit of a switch I am primarily submissive, and in general it just feels off.

Realizing and accepting that I am a submissive has been very tumultuous for me, and I still haven't figured out where everything goes and what is connected to what, and having to deal with wanting things you have been told your entire life you should not want is not easy. The physically masochistic part of it hasn't been that difficult to come to terms with, it can be brushed off as a physical quirk that doesn't really carry much importance, like having some lightly unusual erogenous zone or something, but accepting that the main reason I enjoy having pain inflicted on me is that it intensifies the feeling of submission and helplessness and being owned was a bit harder.

Still I'm feeling a little bit more at ease with this side of me now than say a year ago. After having read a lot of blogs by both submissives and dominants who are quite a bit further into it than I think I am I am finally starting to grasp that my desire to please and be bossed around does not have to be a trait I should try to overcome. It's comforting to know there are quite a lot of people out there who have fully embraced it in themselves, and quite a lot of other people who find it to be a very attractive trait.

So now instead of looking for symmetry I am going to focus on balance. I just want to be able to be myself, and feel like I can express myself the way I am naturally inclined to do, and not have to repress or tone things down. I want someone who understands that I want to do this because it's who I am, and who isn't intimidated by it, who can see that unless you view it as unhealthy or inappropriate it's just... not. It's not a bomb, it's just a part of me that can and wants to be played with, and that I enjoy if I feel like I am in a situation where I can indulge in it.

But this wasn't really what I was going to write about! I really wanted to talk about one of the reasons I want to be dominated and hurt. I have a frantic mind. I can't for the life of me stop thinking very hard about things. I obsess and analyze and put up lamps all over to look at things in different lights. I can't do much about it, it's just how I roll, and most of the time I quite like it. I like to think it makes me a pretty good conversationalist, and a lot of the time it makes me able to see several sides of things, and connect things in what I consider interesting ways. It's useful. It keeps me on my toes. It makes me creative, and, sometimes, in some ways, determined.

However, it can be, and is often, absolutely exhausting. While it is almost impossible for me to switch off my over-active brain it can be done, with a little help. When I'm tied up and being hurt the only things I can think about is how completely stuck and helpless I am, how much it hurts, and the fear and anticipation of what will happen next. The pain interrupts the usual steady stream of thoughts running through my mind, and it temporarily stops it. It's so relieving, and relaxing, being forced to live in the moment because I'm so undeniably physically stuck in it. It's so... absolute. In that moment that is all there is. There's no point in being self conscious, because I have no options anyway, I'm stuck where I am, it's utterly out of my hands. There's a meditative quality to it. It both frightens me and makes me feel very safe at the same time. Taken care of, somehow.

The cards are here!

2011-10-28T22:51:00.002+02:00

My holiday cards were delivered yeterday, and they're looking good! I'll be putting them up on eBay too, but they'll be the same price as here so it won't really matter where you buy them.

These are the available motifs:

Card 1: Snowball Fight


Card 2: Feline Carollers

They are 5.5 " x 4.2 " / 13,9 x 10,7 cm and printed on matte 100% recycled paper. The back sides are blank save for a small copyright text and on one of the motifs a small recycling symbol. (It was meant to be on both but wasn't for some reason!)

2 cards: 25 kr / $4 USD / £2.45 / €2.80
6 cards: 60 kr / $9.40 USD / £5.85 / €6.65
10 cards: 75 kr / $11.40 USD / £7.10 / €8.25

Shipping within Sweden:
2 cards: 6 kr
6 cards: 12 kr
10 cards: 12 kr

Shipping within Europe:
2 cards: $2 / £1.20 / €1.35
6 cards: $3.80 / £2.40 / €2.65
10 cards: $3.80 / £2.40 / €2.65

Shipping outside Europe:
2 cards: $2
6 cards: $4.40
10 cards: $4.40

If you want more than ten cards let me know and I'll check shipping for you.

If you don't specify how many cards you want of each motif I will send half of each.

You can comment or e-mail me at liselotte@liselotteeriksson.com for a total, or just calculate it yourself and paypal me to that same address. If you're in Sweden you can also put money into my bank account.

Procrastination, fear of failure, "it's not the goal, it's the road" blah blah

2011-10-28T17:15:00.002+02:00

I'm a bit too set on things being finished. I think it keeps me from doing a lot of things, writing in particular. I don't want to write about subjects unless they are absolute, unless I know exactly what is what, and why. I am starting to realize that it's fine to write about things as they are happening, being made, starting out. It should be kind of obvious that that's when things are at their most interesting anyway, when they are moving around and being tried and tested. If you write about them when you know the outcome you will automatically look at them in a different light, and read other things into everything, and that's a kind of loss, really.

I'm like this with most things. I want to show finished products of everything. I want to be all "TADAAA!" and everyone will applaud and go "Wow, I didn't know you could do that!" and I'll be all "Yeah well, there's a lot of things you don't know about me..." and put on a sequin top hat and cartwheel out of the room. I'd rather not talk about things I plan to do until I am either done with them, or too far ahead to stop. For instance I don't like showing people sketches I intend to finish, only finished paintings. Progress photos are fine once I'm actually done with the painting, but I don't want to show them before then. I think mostly it's because I'm afraid of being criticized before I have had a chance to show the whole thing, the bigger picture. Once I'm done I can be all "Oh yeah maybe, but it's done now so it's too late to change anything, kbai!"

It has its' upsides, sometimes, because it keeps me on my own track instead of someone else's, and let's me ~*focus on my own vision*~ and crap, but too often it's just cowardly, and sometimes just plain stupid if my track isn't a very good one. I also use it as an excuse to not start things. I guess if I don't focus on the road the goal will be at a safe distance and I can go back to just thinking about how nice it would be to be there already. I need to learn to divide things into parts to focus on instead of thinking of the road as a huge big unmanageable thing that is too intimidating to even look at.

It often also stops me from trying new things. I'm too scared of anyone seeing me be a big n00b before I have gotten the hang of whatever it is, so instead I just don't do it. It's really pathetic actually now that I look at it. I only really branch out when it comes to things I can learn by myself. The only thing I can think of that I have learned to do in front of other people as an adult was to dance bugg, and the only reason I managed to do that was because dad was there with me, and he already knew how to do it very well, and I wasn't afraid to fail in front of him because he's my dad and he's pretty much the coolest cat on the planet, but in a non intimidating way.

This was basically a very long-winded way of saying I procrastinate like a motherbitchface because I'm afraid of failure, and that I should stop doing that because it's stupid and it doesn't get me anywhere.

Random memories

2011-10-28T01:42:00.001+02:00

I had planned to finish tidying up and decorating my place tonight for my Halloween party Saturday, but instead I just made more of a mess putting my costume together and dancing around to Shut Up And Sleep With Me by Sin and Sebastian, and now apparently I'm writing an entry about random memories. Ah well!

I got my ears pierced when I was six. All the earrings offered at the hair salon where I got it done were ugly white plastic studs with different coloured stones. I chose blue ones. It didn't hurt as far as I remember, and I was very proud of having had it done. I don't remember how long you were meant to have them in before being allowed to change them to other earrings, but I do remember sitting on the lawn in the backyard and sneakily taking one out way before it was time to do so, just to check, and it started bleeding, and I got very scared and put it back in. I never mentioned it to my mother.

When I was 11, I think, I tried to sneak off to school with makeup on the day the year photo was to be taken. Mum caught me before I slipped through the door and made me take it off. I purposely did a bad job, and if you look carefully you can see a trace of blue eyeliner in the picture. I also look rather pleased with myself.

When I was little the basement I now live in was a Very Spooky Place. It has been renovated a lot now, but back then it was quite dusty and dark and scary. We kept the freezer down here for some reason, and when my sister Mia and I had to go down to get something from it we would make the other one stand at the top of the stairs and sing or talk or just yell things so the one in the basement didn't feel so alone during the panicky short while she was down here. A shelf covered the wall opposite the freezer, and the shelf was covered with a red curtain if I recall correctly. The shelf contained jars, buckets, flower pots and a whole lot of spiders, and I was always afraid a hand would reach out from behind the curtain to grab me. When you were done fetching whatever it was from the freezer you would rush up the stairs in a panicky manner, and your heart wouldn't stop racing until the basement door was shut behind you.

We also have a sauna down here, and Mia would say there were three fried men in there to scare me. I think she just wanted to be funny when she first invented them, but was thrilled to see that they actually terrified me, and kept it up for a long time.

There was also the attic, which was equally scary, but still not as big of a deal since you never went up there except when you wanted to be adventurous and look for mice. The floor isn't solid up there, and you have to tread carefully on some wooden boards unless you want to fall through the downstairs ceiling. This was of course quite exciting. I went up once in a while to set up friendly mouse traps, but I never caught any mice, which was probably for the best since I had a tendency to forget to check the traps once I had set them up.

So yes, we had mice. Mia and I were very upset with our parents for leaving rat poison out for them, and yelled at them a lot for it. I think I also threw quite a bit of it out. I remember very vividly how a mouse once darted across my foot when running across the room, and how extremely happy it made me to have touched a wild animal, and especially a mouse, since they were (and still are) one of my favourite animals. I remember where they had their holes, one was under a build in closet in dad's bedroom. I would check it often for mouse noses. I think it's still there.

I was also rather obsessed with birds as a child, and as a teenager too. I would try to build elaborate traps for them so I could hold one, but they weren't very good, so of course I never caught one. I gave up the trapping idea and instead tried to tame them. It actually went fairly well, I got a bunch of them to sit on and eat from my hand. Mostly they were Great Tits. I'm now tempted to make some joke about how I wouldn't mind getting my hands on some great tits now, but I won't, 'cause I'm classy.

On the evening of the last day of sixth grade I went out biking with two guys in my class. We did that a lot. We all had fancy pants mountain bikes, and felt pretty damn cool because of it. Both guys were supposedly in love with me, and at one point we stopped at a parking lot, and both they tried to win me over by telling me the sizes of their penises. I didn't quite understand why I would care, since I had no interest in the measurements of any one's private bits, or anything else about their private bits either for that matter, since I was 12 at the time. Telling you this story totally proves how classy I am.

Five recent paintings up for auction

2011-10-26T02:31:00.001+02:00

20% of any profit goes to WWF! Click here to get to the auctions.

New (ish) painting: Pixies

2011-10-26T02:13:00.000+02:00

21 x 15 / 5.9 " x 8.3 "
Original: on eBay

Made this a while ago but never posted it because I wasn't very happy with it. Now I think it's quite cute.

Fun fact: I will always think of the king in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell when I look at this painting, because I was painting it whilst listening to* the bit where Strange goes to visit him.

*Audio books ftw!

New painting: Untitled

2011-10-25T03:00:00.000+02:00

30 x 21 cm / 11.5 x 8.4 "
Original: 445 SEK / $68 USD including worldwide shipping