Yeah, so the whole weekend sucked. I can’t think of any other time I’ve been in that much consistent, awful pain, since…mmmm. Childbirth? The toothache that led up to the root canal? Toss-up. Anyway, I went to the doctor on Monday and I have “frozen shoulder” and he gave me a cortisone shot on the spot and aaaaahhhh… sweet, sweet relief.
It’s not 100% gone and I can feel it threatening to come back after only 2 full days of working so have to talk to my boss and get SOMETHING, anything, figured out about what in my work situation is contributing to this issue and get it fixed STAT. Went to the physical therapist today and it hurts again, but all over my neck and back, and I can at least move my arm around and pull up my pants without crying when I go to the bathroom. Yes, that bad.
Also, am tired of myself and my one-note ow-my-shoulder wah-wah-wah. Here comes the wahmbulance. Pity party!
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Guess who is still going to be on the AWC board because no one even asked about taking over my position? *sigh*
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I went and voted in my first Swedish national election since I moved here 17 and a half years ago. I’ve voted in local elections but since I wasn’t a Swedish citizen before last year, I’ve never been able to vote for the national government. It was kind of a let-down. They have a bazillion political parties here in Sweden and all of them are kind of meh and one of them is godawful and I really struggled to learn a little bit about the ones I thought were most compatible with my values so I could make an informed decision. I asked one friend who is actually involved in politics and was running for office in Malmö about how the Swedish parties compare to the Democrat / Republican parties in the U.S. and he just snorted. “ALL of the parties here are so far to the left of what stands for left in the Democratic party in the U.S. that you can’t even compare.”
OK, good to know, but not really all that helpful. You take your voter card, that you get in the mail, with you to the polling station, which in our village is the elementary school cafeteria at the school Martin and Karin went to for years. Before you go in, you stop and pick up little papers that are sorted by political party and by national, regional or local (county) elections. This is right out in the open, where everyone is waiting, so basically, if anyone cares and is watching, they can all see which party papers you have picked up. These little party papers ARE the ballots. You can just put them as is in their envelopes, which means you are voting for the party, or you can check the name of a specific person within that party, or you can choose to write in a name of your own that you want to vote for. If you don’t want people to know who you are voting for, you have to pick up papers for a bunch of parties and then discard the ones you don’t want when you get into the voting booth.
You get 3 envelopes to put your papers in: one for national, regional and local, and you go into the voting booth to insert them in the envelopes. Then you come out and show your voting card and your ID to someone who crosses your name off the voting register book and they put the envelopes in the ballot boxes for you. SO. MUCH. PAPER.
Every year, people vote for Donald Duck (his results were way down this year compared to 2010, though) or the King of Sweden (who doesn’t even vote himself, on principle, though he’s allowed to now, since the rules changed in 1974; before that the royal family wasn’t allowed). Anders and I voted for different parties, and he joked when we left the school that he hadn’t brought me all the way over here and made it possible for me to be a citizen just so I could cancel out his vote. Heh.
Everyone here is outraged and upset that the “racist” party made so much progress this election and more than doubled their percentage, but SOMEONE is voting for them. Karin wants to start her own political party. I told her to “be the change you hope to see happen” when she said she was only 15 and what could she do?
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I promise a book post is coming, but I wanted to be thorough and give it more spotlight than having to share space with my stupid shoulder and Swedish politics. 🙂