Christmas

Yet another traditional Cuzner Christmas. Genderbender drag king santa gave the kids their gifts and lessons on equality. I've played santa for several years in a row now and every year I look less and less like the traditional santa. The kids love it.


Before I left Sweden last year I lived up north with Lars, Johanna and Laura (that little monkey!) for a couple of weeks. We were waiting for kid #10 to be born, but Reuben was quiet and calm already in the belly. He was born just a couple of days after had left for Peru.


The four cousins in Europe. Eliot (7), Laura (3), Uma (2), and Reuben (1).

Step-grandma Nancy got them all painted and then we put them in the jacuzzi.

When you have kids around the adults tend to forget about eachother. So there's not that many photos of us, and only one where most of us are together... and there are no kids!

Miya and I won TP for the first time!!!! Amazing cause she couldn't even keep her head up (we ran out of wine that night). Steven lost for the first time so he wouldn't show his face. Dad and Nancy just wouldn't take the game seriously.... surprise, surprise!



I did win TP against the adults, but I lost a game of chess against Eliot. Looks like he was beating pappa Steven as well, but Steven was more than pleased to abruptly end the game as soon as dinner was ready.



Just look how sweet the cousins are, playing out in the idyllic, oh so swedish, upper middle class suburb where dad and Nancy decided to buy a house.


Beautiful big sister Miya, how could she leave me and move to Portugal!?!


The next generation cuzner artists.



All the little ones look up to Eliot.



And in case no one noticed before... we didn't have a beard, so we had to improvise with a... diaper!!! (non used)







I love watching my siblings as parents.

Laura couldn't really remember me from last year, but she associated my name to something positive so when Lars and Johanna said that they were going to see Melinda she got all excited. She called everybody that seemed friendly for Melinda and for the first couple of days Nancy was called "the other Melinda". How about that for an ego kick?


It's great to be back in my apartment, and to have my cat again!!! Poor little Sataña, she used to be so particular about everything but now she even lets the kids grab her!


Uma!!! She's an exact copy of Miya when she was that same age. Cute little bald kid! In Portugal they say she's the cutest little boy they've ever seen, even when she wears pink.

Things I love about Stockholm

I went to see Saralunden yesterday, she gave me her new cd for my birthday and I'm hooked. Steven and Nandor have started playing back up for her

It was quite a cozy familiar feeling and I think everyone there actually knew each other.

Even my "cousin" Petter was there, Steven's playing on his cd that'll be released in January. It was so good to see him and we had a really nice deep talk.

Steven at the drums, not singing this time...

My auntie and my role model, Kerstin. All children should have aunties like us! ;-P
I went to her farm to get a little bit of that christmas feeling we're all supposed to be feeling. Oh yeah, it snowed for an hour yesterday!!!!!

My real cousin, and Petter's real cousin, Daniel. I used to push his baby carriage around, now he's 20 and way more mature than me!

Anyways, I won't make a list of things that I love and hate about Stockholm or anything else considering that I'm angry about just about everything lately (especially about my decision to quit smoking). But here are some things that have made me happy lately.

Taking Eliot to the Museum of Natural History. We spent the whole day there learning about dinosaurs, the environment, the human body etc etc. Best of all was the Cosmonova all surround screen and having the feeling of flying.

Seing Steven just about everywhere, doing lots of stuff, doing nothing, sleeping over at each others place and still not to have to feel guilty if you happen to not call for two weeks...

Drinking tea at fancy tea shops with Nicklas, getting updated on all the new underground and alternative artists that I've had the bad taste of not keeping updated on this past year. Clinging on Nicklas and Roger, watching the young ones at their place until Nicklas passes out. And shocking Roger with my vulgarities (can I actually still shock my audience?!).

Gaging about anything improper with Mika and Patricia sitting in the kitchen at a party remembering all the crazy things we did or would have done at parties a couple of years ago. Making a fool out of yourself gets sort of glorified when you no longer dare to do it.

Watching tv and crashing over at Simon's. Combining simplicity and complexity is underrated. And seeing his mom! She's so coooool!

Running around town with Boaz talking about all the superficial things in the world one minute and the next digging right down to the bottom of things. He's gonna be my pilates instructor... man is he ever gonna whip me into shape!

Being able to follow Maria C's afterwork plans, dim sums, parties and just simply being neighbors with her and Jesper again.

Hanging on the playground with Malin, Tove, Steven and Eliot. Most of the time sitting on those bizarre metal dogs that are heated and keep your bottom nice and sizzling.

Building a kitchen at Ikea in less than 2 hours, although it was less fun to find out I'd been running around with my zipper open! Oh, this is how you know you're in Sweden, the signs on the highway show you the way to Ikea! But they didn't warn for the dying deer laying on the road :-(

And seeing family, of course. All these aunties and cousins and uncles and fathers and cousins kids and....

I miss Miya who's moved to Portugal, I miss Maria D who's moved to Copenhagen, I miss Sara who's moved to Uppsala (which is way better than Huddiksvall, but still haven't seen her), I miss Anna of course, who still lives way the hell up north in a little village outside of Umeå. I miss Lars, but he's been down from Umeå once already and he'll be coming back down on friday.

Yeah and I love running into all my lovely ones down town, people that fit in my heart but not in my phone book.

30 years old and Back to Sthlm

Even I get older... and this time it was time for me to turn 30... darn it. I've quit smoking... like I said I would.... and it's been more than a week now, so I think I can safely say that I'm no longer a smoker!

I didn't feel like having a big party, I've had enough crazyness for a while. But Lars flew down from Umeå and Steven had Eliot this weekend so we were all over at Dad's place and had a nice dinner. The rest of the weekend I spent with Eliot and my bros. I did manage to do some partying... but only a little.

Pictures are sort of tipped over, will fix it later.

Eliot and Nancy baking me a cake.

Steven waiting to eat the cake

Lars anxious to eat the cake. Nancy's son Juri and his girlfriend were there as well.

Eliot carefully lit 30 candles. See, he'd written my name as well!!!

Lars and Steven worked most of the time. Damn artists!

Eliot

Seattle

Had a short visit with my grandma in Seattle before flying to Sweden. Farmor Mary and her husband Lloyd took very good care of me and I never had to go hungry!!!

Vancouver

Sometimes love comes suddenly and unexpectedly. This love hit me when I was down in Vancouver the first time around. Charles and Terry! Here´s the story in brief. I went down to be by my brothers side and we just happend to go for dinner with a collegue of his and his boyfriend. We had such a good time and when they offered me to stay at their place I just couldn´t say no. So all of a sudden I´m installed at Terrys place in Vancouver and it feels like the most natural thing in the world. If it wasn´t for the fact that my money was running out I probably would have stayed forever!



This is how happy I felt with them!





Well, all my friends seem to have emigrated to Vancouver. I didn't think I would, but I found a whole bunch of them. Manjinder deserves a special mentioning here. Hmmm, what can I say about the worlds most wonderful man? After not seeing eachother for 10 years you start wondering if it was all in your head and he couldn´t possibly be as good as you remember. But yes, he still rocks my world.

A classical Melinda/Manjinder pose. I humour myself by thinking that we haven´t changed at all. Well, it certainly didn't feel that way. I will have to look back at the the photos from 1992, 1994, 1996



Crystal, she's still radiant! Well, she is giving birth in three weeks, but she´s always had a glow about her. I took a day to visit her in Nanaimo. One day was not nearly enough time... I will have to come back again soon. Funny, I lived in Nanaimo for over a year but I know nobody there except my old friend from the Fort who moved there years after I had already left.


So grown up! Brook remembers me from my visit 5 years ago, Dane was way too young to rember.


Loretta, Carolyn and I used to cruise the three streets of Fort St. James. Now we´re all grown up and all the cruising that gets done is going to work, buy groceries and the kids activeties. Well... the last one doesn´t apply to me. Loretta married the boy next door and they now live in Vancouver with a lovely little Bella and another little one on the way.



Hmmm, too bad I don´t have photos of the others I got to see in Vancouver. Robyn, Mike, Rob, Perry... yeah, will definately have to revisit soon again.

Having problems...

Okej, I was never really able to capture the feeling of being circled by mountains... but from the air you can see it quite clear. If you ever forget how little man kind is then check this out. And we all know what men do when they feel inferior to something... hmm... should I choose the environmentalist discourse here? Heck yeah, let's not destroy our beautiful nature!





Well, we'll see if these configurations work... I keep on getting spit out from the blogger so I don't know what picture's I've posted so it's going a bit bazurk I guess.