My relationship to my breasts was complicated for a long time. I was late to develop, always the shortest one in my class (even though I am now of average height). “All” the other girls had breasts but not me. And my breasts were small, which I was self-conscious about. It was always difficult to find bras, even when I was adult.

When I was pregnant I even worried a bit whether I would be able to breastfeed with such small breasts. But boy did they grow when the milk came in. I was fascinated by the change. Big, round, full breasts, with visible veins. I even had a cleavage!

And they worked great for breastfeeding. Ingrid was over two when I stopped breastfeeding, and I only did it so we could start trying for another kid. Adrian, at over two and a half, still nurses. I won’t really call it “feeding” any more because it’s not about food any more. It’s about intimacy and comfort. Even Ingrid still likes to sit close and lean her cheek against my chest sometimes when Adrian nurses.

During these years I have become friends with my breasts. I now see them more with my kids’ eyes, rather than with others’ eyes. They are yummy and cuddly. They are not there to be looked at, and I really don’t care at all what other people may think of them. Nowadays they are quite small again and it doesn’t bother me the least. I have stopped wearing a bra because I have realized that I don’t need one, even though all the billboards try to sell them to me.

There is a debate going on in Swedish media right now about näthat, “net hate”: hateful, threatening, demeaning comments to bloggers and journalists, especially women. Death threats, graphic descriptions of sexual violence, harassment online and offline. The trigger was an episode of a respected investigative TV programme, Uppdrag Granskning, that focused on net hate. As an extra twist, a trailer for that episode got so many hate comments on YouTube that comments were turned off.

I feel as if those people must be a different species, not entirely human. How is it possible for a seemingly normal human being to feel so little empathy, so little kinship with another, that you can either (1) seriously wish to torture and kill them because you don’t agree with their opinions, or (2) imagine that the target for those threats “probably doesn’t care much” because it wasn’t seriously meant?

I don’t hate anything or anybody, and I cannot even really imagine the feeling. There are people towards whom I feel contempt, disgust, anger. There are people without whom the world would be a better place, and I would be glad if they ceased to exist – mass murderers and such.

Even from such negative feelings, there is a huge leap to wishing great humiliation, pain and suffering on those people. Not just wishing them gone from the world, but wishing that they died a painful death, or spending time and energy on harassing and humiliating them.

I can sort of imagine, very hypothetically, that I could possibly feel such hate in response to some great harm done to me or my family – if those mass murderers had killed my children, say – if I wasn’t really in my right mind.

But in response to a blog post with which you don’t agree? What could fill those commenters with so much hate?

Or perhaps it is me who is not entirely normal. (Well, I knew that already, but perhaps this is another aspect of it.)

Is it normal to hate?

Office toilets are weird.

I’m OK with the toilets in my home. I know the bottoms that sit on them, and have seen them all naked countless times.

I’m OK with public toilets, too. They are so impersonal that I never think of the other people who sit on them. Those people are distant, they leave no trace of personality behind. It is as if they were never there, especially if the toilet is not busy and I never see whoever else was there before me.

But it feels strange to share a toilet with people that I kind of know, but not really: office toilets, toilets at friends’ homes, etc. Suddenly I am strongly reminded that other people have used that toilet. That those other people have bottoms, and that they pull their pants down, and then sit where I sat. Which is not the kind of thoughts that I normally have about my bosses, colleagues and neighbours.

It is interesting that we have become so far removed from our animal backgrounds that I can actually forget that other people have bodies and bodily functions, too – and feel weirded out when I’m reminded of them.

Vacation becomes an endurance sport when kids are involved. It’s pretty tiring. Luckily from today Eric is also on vacation and I am no longer alone with two kids.

Instead I suspect that I will now feel that this is my chance to get things done around the house and wear myself out that way.

I was raised a perfectionist. If I didn’t have perfect grades, I sensed mild, baffled disappointment – “What happened? Surely you can do better?” That expectation rooted itself in me and I came to see it as natural, and as my own. So for years I’ve tried to do things as well as I possibly can.

“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.” When I’ve known that I don’t have the time or skill to do something well, I have chosen to not do it.

Now I am finally trying to unlearn that perfectionism and to practice “good enough” instead. “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.”

See that chair makeover in the previous post? The seats of our kitchen chairs were worn out and stained and needed replacing. Reupholstering a seat is not much work: from beginning to end, it took me about an hour per seat. But there are also the backrests. Reupholstering those would require the chair to be disassembled almost completely, and then the actual reupholstering would be a lot fiddlier. I don’t even know exactly how the fabric is attached, but it would almost certainly require more than scissors and a staple gun, probably quite a lot of measuring and sewing. Given all the other tasks and projects on my list, it was clear to me that that just wasn’t going to happen. I could of course also have bought new chairs, or accepted them in their somewhat ugly state. But I opted for a good-enough solution, and reupholstered just the part that actually needed it. So what if the seat fabric now doesn’t match the backrest.

Likewise in the garden. For some time now (like, a couple of years) I’ve wanted to do something with the one and only flowerbed in our garden. To do it properly, we should replace the stones around it, because the lawn is creeping into the flowerbed. And we should probably move them a bit further out because the flowerbed is quite narrow. And we should really mix manure or compost into the soil, which is dry and poor. But… all that would take me an entire weekend, and that’s just not going to happen any time soon. So instead of waiting for that utopian weekend (with no kids to interrupt my work, and decent weather, and nothing more urgent to do) I just bought and planted a bunch of perennials that should hopefully be able to cope with the poor soil, in the narrow space that is there, and then threw in some cheap annuals to get some colour straight away. It’s not perfect, but it’s something, which is way better than nothing.

This weekend we bought some dahlias, which I repotted and put out on the deck yesterday evening. But I forgot to check the weather report and therefore they were damaged by the night frost – just hours after I put them out. Now I feel like a fool, and sad to see for the beautiful flowers that hang brown and shrivelled. I hope they recover, otherwise I will have to start over.

And the cold I’ve had for a week got worse during the weekend, and today I realized it’s now turned into sinusitis – fever, half my head aches, and my teeth as well.

And Adrian’s reaction to seeing me trying to rest on the sofa is to get all worried and clingy, and want to nurse every 5 minutes, so really there wasn’t any resting for me until he went to bed.

Now I’m in a grumpy mood, feeling sorry for myself and the flowers. I’m treating myself with chocolate – after about 60kr worth of nice pralines from Chokladfabriken I am feeling distinctly better.

Yesterday I linked to an article about the general negative and nasty tone that reigns in Estonia, and wrote about how I don’t want to live there because of it.

A positive atmosphere is important to me. I make an effort to make sure that this is what I have around me.

“Say yes.” “Look on the bright side.” “What’s the worst that can happen.” “Of course I can do this.”

And this does require real effort at times. Sometimes positivity comes easily, but at other times I sink into a passive, negative mood. It goes in waves. Nothing nearly as dramatic as bipolar disease, but there are noticeable (to me) waves nevertheless. In the troughs I have a high activation energy, to borrow a scientific term: it is difficult for me to get started with any activity, and easier to just be lazy and do nothing in particular. (The default mindless activity is usually mindlessly browsing the web.)

I am aware of this tendency and that is often enough to counteract the worst of it. I know that my inclination is to say no to activities, and I know that once I get started I am almost sure to enjoy it. I make an effort to say yes.

Negative people “eat up” the energy I have. I can feel it drain out of me.

With some people, in some relationships, I see it as my responsibility to support and encourage and push them towards positivity, when needed. I do this very consciously with Ingrid: it is part of my responsibility as parent. I see it as part of my role as team leader at work, too.

(That is another important reason for me not to want to live in Estonia: I don’t want my kids exposed for any long time to that kind of attitude towards other people, that kind of parenting and child-raising.)

With some people, though, I know that I have no chance: my positive energy is not sufficient to overpower their negativity. These are the people who seem to enjoy complaining and being miserable, who imagine and seem to expect the worst in every situation, who instinctively criticize and find fault with everything.

I had a friend with whom I have effectively lost all contact because I could not withstand his unceasing flood of negativity and pessimism. There is another with whom I choose to keep in touch but limit the time I spend with her, and refuse to talk about certain topics, or just let the conversation pass me by without really listening.

Imbi Paju: peita ja unustada hoolimine (Hide and forget about caring)

This is an opinion piece by Imbi Paju, an Estonian author, about how the Soviet occupation and its opression of the Estonian people destroyed caring and sympathy and fomented mistrust and enmity between fellow Estonians. Those events, now long past, continue to affect Estonians to this very day.

The article is unfortunately in Estonian only, and Google Translate doesn’t manage Estonian particularly well. If you are not familiar with Estonian history, you can read a bit more at Wikipedia about the Soviet deportations from Estonia.

Even today, the general tone in Estonia – both in public discourse, in media and in everyday life – is characterised by a relative lack of respect and empathy, by putting each other down and trampling each other in the mud. This article lays bare the roots of this behaviour, which is not so much Estonian but rather the behaviour of an oppressed nation. An abused nation behaves like an abused person.

I notice this every time I read an Estonian newspaper or blog (and I have by now learned to never EVER look at the comments for any newspaper article), and to some extent when I visit Estonia. Less so when I meet Estonians, because the people I meet are of a younger generation, and perhaps they have already managed to put some of that past behind them. To purge all of it will take another generation at least, it seems.

This is why I never seriously consider moving back to Estonia. I like individual Estonians but I cannot live among only Estonians. It would drag me down.

It is very Estonian to identify with the country, the land. Estonia is still close to its farmer roots. People can ask an expat Estonian, how can you leave your country? I don’t identify with the land but with the people, which makes it all the more painful to admit to myself that while I do miss them, I do not really want to live among them.

After I posted about my achievementless 2011, a friend remarked that one major project we completed last year was the remodelling of our house. That is true, but I don’t count it as a personal achievement. It wasn’t mostly my doing – it would count as an achievement for the builders but not for me. And it didn’t apply to me but our house. I didn’t change, learn, or experience anything new. Rather, I bought something. Which can be a big event but it’s not an achievement.

But my friend has a point in that my previous post was too one-sided. So, here is a more nuanced review of 2011.

• Top things I will remember 2011 for: The remodelling. A full year on a milk-free diet.
• Other memorable events: I went back to work after my maternity leave with Adrian.
• Major projects I completed: My felt advent calendar.
• Major decisions: We bought a car.

Every year, for the past 10+ years, I have looked back at the year that passed and summed up the major changes in my life and any particular achievements. There have been career shifts, getting married and giving birth, climbing mountains, moving from one country to another, learning new technologies, taking up new hobbies etc.

This year I look back and I can’t point to anything memorable that I have achieved, learned, or experienced. I do useful work, but nothing I do is remarkable either from the company’s point of view or for me personally. I cannot say that I have moved forward from where I was standing the same time last year. And last year was equally dull careerwise, but at least there was the birth of Adrian to remember.

Something has to change in 2012.