It all kicked off with my lovely and - up until now - very healthy but prematurely born niece Jakobine, getting sick. And not just slightly, she got a virus called RS, stopped breathing several times and got sent to a major hospital in Oslo and put in a respirator. My brother and his wife followed her, of course, and my dad and I had to help each other out with watching my nephew. This in turn resulted in me having to sleep over at my brothers house for a while, getting very little sleep both because I was worried, and because my nephew was also sick and I was just waiting for him to cough up a lung.
The day after this happened I went to a christmas party at work, where I was told that one of our cows had died. If you'd asked me three months ago I would've told you that I am not a fan of cows - all right, thank you for burgers, cheese and milkshake, but they're not my favorite animals, but the ones we have at work, however, are actually sort of cute - all black and fluffy, and shy creatures. The cow who died had tried to give birth, but something went wrong and both she and her calf died, and to my surprise this made me feel really bad - I imagined how painful her death must've been. "You do realize you're sympathizing with a cow?" a mate asked me. "Yes, I do!" I was even more horrified when I realized that we would have to move said cow away from the field, and the only way to move a huge cow (a cow and a half, actually), is by tieing her to a tractor and pull her out of there. Furthermore - the people who come to collect dead animals couldn't make it until after christmas, resulting in the poor having to lie under a plastic wrapper behind the barn for weeks. Just... uch. This just goes to show that I could never have been a farmer tending to animals - I would've given them all names and cried every time something went wrong. I'll just settle for a pack of dogs, thanks.
Speaking of dogs - mine is behaving rather wierdly. I'm afraid she's sick - she's suddenly refusing to eat the food she was happily munching a few weeks ago. Maybe she just suddenly decided she didn't like if after all. Which figures, seeing as I just bought a 7,5kg bag of the stuff.
Another proof of this being weird times must be what I've been listening to the past weeks. Usually I listen to stuff like Tool, Depeche Mode, Arcade Fire - Yes, it's varied, but I do feel I keep to certain standards. Lately, however, I've been stuck on songs by Pink and Dido, of all people. Oh, and this song, which makes me really happy these days.
My title for this post comes from the last Top Gear episode, of which a (grand?) piano gets dropped on a Morris, supposedly by accident. Go download the 7th episode of the 12th season, even just to watch the news segment. I laughed out loud for the entire thing.
Today I suddenly realised that there's only 6 days left until christmas, which made me sort of panic, even though I am not quite sure why. I've finished all my gift shopping, I've finished all of my dad's gift shopping, I've got my hair fixed, shopped most of my food, I should be all set. I guess it's just the uncertainty of it all - I still don't know wether my brother, his wife and my tiny niece will be home by Christmas Eve, although I hope so, even only for their own sake , but the fact remains that they will be in the hospital for days still, and all the preparations will have to be done on the fly and under what I can only guess will be sort of stressful conditions. Good thing tomorrow is the last day - after that I have over two weeks of holiday, which I am going to spend doing as little as possible!
