New Hat!

I'm a baseball cap type of guy, always have been since i was younger, or well not to young i think i started wearing a baseball cap when i was about 13 i think. The reason behind not wearing one any younger was because i had a really bad thing about my ears, i always thought they were to big and remember referring to them on many occasions as dumbo ears, infact sometimes i still actually do.

But like i said when i was about 13 i think i started to get more into them, it seemed like it was the fashion and everyone was doing it so i jumped on the bandwagon and began to wear one too, and up until now i have never left the house without it. Actually before i moved here and at the start when i was living in Sweden i refused to take it off entirely, i would wear it all day everyday and only took it off to have a shower, bath and go to bed.

Something recently changed though, after watching the first season of New York Ink, the TV show about tattoo artists in the NYC area, i noticed that the lead tattooer and the shop owner who is none other than Mr Ami James was wearing a different type of hat, something i like to refer to as "The Grandad Hat"

Now the reason i always referred to this as "The Grandad Hat" was simply because whenever i seen a old man who was wearing a hat, it was always one of these, hence the name. But after seeing Ami James sport one of these i actually thought to myself how cool it actually looked and immediately turned around and told Marie "That hat is so cool, i so want one of those". 

Now i wouldn't say i was a fashionable type of guy, i'm the type of gent that wears the normal T-Shirt, Jeans & Trainers and that is about as fashionable as i get, although back when i was about 17 i did used to always wear a nice shirt and a pair of jeans with my trainers. Something my mum always thought i looked really smart in when i was out, and seeing as this was my whole outfit on a daily basis it made me feel good inside, but of course that has changed and i have gone back to the old t-shirt and jeans.

So on the weekend we decided that we would take a family trip into town, do a little shopping have a coffee and something to eat at a local café and generally just have a nice day out, but i was on another mission the mission was to find one of these hats and purchase it. Marie had recalled that she had seen them in one of our local clothing stores called H&M and we took a trip into there and found them, i instantly fell in love and found one that would fit and bought it.

My daughter immediately started to laugh when i put it on, thinking that i look absolutely ridiculous with it on, but i don't care i think it looks awsome and i'm going to wear it with pride, however seeing as i now have my stylish cool hat, Marie now reckons that i need to completely change my appearance altogether which means no more jeans & t-shirts but instead i need to now get myself some shirts and go back to my old look. I don't really mind this if i'm honest as i used to feel good when leaving the house in a shirt and jeans, but i hate shopping, and i especially hate cloth shopping. But i guess i'm just going to have to bite the bullet as they say and go and do it.

Damn i look awsome in my new hat!

I would ask that you ignore the stupid look on my face, i was sitting on Skype to my parents at the time when Marie decided it would be a great time to take some pictures of me, and for some stupid reason i think i'll just blame my mum i cannot take good pictures no matter what, my eyes always make me look like i'm drunk and i have no idea what was going on with my lips.

So what do you think? You think i sport this awsome looking hat well?

Until next time, i hope you all have a great day!

The Pizzeria Adventure.

Something we don't normally do as a family in my house is go out for dinner, i know it's quite a big thing in countries like America and such like but over here in Sweden, it's not all that common. I think the Swedish people in general just like to gather at home at the dinner table and eat dinner together there, but on Friday we decided that for a special treat for the kids that we would take a little stroll up to our local pizzeria here in Järpås and treat them to a pizza.

Unfortunately unknown to us until we had got up there, our son Alexander had decided that he would eat not one but SIX pancakes at school for lunch which left himself rather stuffed. We decided however that this was not going to stop our little family evening out and that we would still treat everyone to a nice evening.

Now after being brought up by parents who always said "If you don't finish your dinner, then there will be no treat after it" i have of course taking up this principle myself, this is probably one of the many things myself and Marie disagree on when it comes to parenting, i remember the first time i ever came out of it in front of our teenage daughter (i think she was around 11 at the time) and her response which made me laugh was "There is always room for candy and goodies after dinner". I can still remember to this day my response being "That is the most stupidest thing i have heard in my life, if you are to full to finish eating your dinner, then are you to full to eat crap afterwards".

On the other hand i was willing to make a slight exception for Alexander, bearing in mind that he had been allowed by the school to eat six pancakes for dinner, i was really shocked by this but apparently at school here in Sweden the children go up and pick up their food themselves. Something we never got to do when i was at school many moons ago, but perhaps this has changed? I don't know but it's something that happens over here at least. But although i was ready to make the exception for Alexander, i did not have the same feeling towards the other two.

Once there we made our order, myself and Marie got our normal dish, which is the kebab plate, which consists of chips, salad and alot of kebab meat and the twins got a small children's pizza which was split in half for them to share, leaving them with about 6 slices each, Mikaela our oldest opted for some Kebab wrap with alot of salad and stuff in it. The minute the food i arrived and i seen Mikaela's choice i knew for a fact that she would not finish it i mean the thing was gigantic, i don't know anyone in the world that would be able to finish that dish so in the back of my head i was thinking well aslong as she finishes half of it i will make the exception for her.

In the end Alexander managed to eat 4 out of the 6 slices and Maximus 5 out of the 6 so they ate pretty well. Mikaela managed to eat about half but had left quite a bit on her plate, so i had said that we should not give them anything good after it as they hadn't eaten as much as i would have liked, plus every child had turned around and said the magic words "I'm to full to finish this"
Now at the pizzeria the guys their normally give the children a lollypop after the meal and the boys of course knew this, so straight after saying that they were full they were asking about their lollypop's, myself of course being the Hitler/enforcer of the family turned to them and said that there would be nothing because they had not finished what they had chosen for dinner.

But just as we were leaving the man behind the counter like always handed the boys their lollypops, i could not believe the look on Max's face, it was the look of "Ha, i got something anyways. You don't decide anything here!". Normally i would let this type of thing go, but Max is in a phase right now where his attitude and cheek towards the family is at a all time high and i decided that i would like to bring him down a peg or two. Perhaps this was childish of me? i have no idea really, but i think as a parent it is my duty to instil certain things into my children so with the look of "Oh really" i turned quickly around and said "You may have the lollypop Maximus, but you are not allowed to open it or eat it". Lets just say the minute those words left my mouth the smirk left his face very quickly.

In the end and after about 3 hours after we had eaten i eventually did give in and allow them to eat their lollypops, i thought it was only fair as although they didn't actually finish the plate they both did really well, especially Alexander after eating all those pancakes at school and still managed to eat 4 out of the 6 slices of pizza he was given, do i feel bad for given in eventually? well yes i do, as i said before i think it is our duty as parents to teach our children good traits so i really shouldn't have but i did, and at least i waited a good few hours after the fact before i decided to give in and allow them to eat there lollypops.

Do you think i did wrong? do you think i was immature in the way i handled how Max was smirking and the look of you don't decide anything?
I would really appreciate some feedback on this, so feel free to drop me a message, or perhaps share a story about something similar.

But for now i think i shall bid you all farewell.

Whatever

There is few words in the English language that annoy my fiancée Marie who is Swedish if you didn't already gather since i'm now living over here. There is a few but they mainly annoy her for the simple fact that she finds them hard to pronounce and in all honesty most of these words even i have trouble with.
However if there was one word that i think she could choose that she absolutely hates, loathes and despises it would have to be the word "WHATEVER".

I should perhaps invest in one of these for Marie?

Why you may ask? well it's one of the words that i use very frequently, i always believed that women as a whole enjoyed having control, me? i'm the laid back guy who doesn't really care all that much about things like décor, dinner and things like that and as i said i always thought women loved being able to choose stuff like that themselves. But Marie? she hates it worse than anything in the world.

So the other day when we were discussing what we should have for dinner and our son Max decided to hop on my bandwagon of i don't know, so just whatever you find is fine set her off the edge i think.

The whole situation started off last Wednesday, Marie had been at work all day and returned but hadn't bought anything for dinner, yes we are one of those family's that normally buy dinner on a daily basis, i know it's a little bit stupid but sometimes that's just how things pan out, but after speaking to me and me giving the normal response of, i have no clue what to have for dinner just pick up whatever she decided that perhaps the twins might be able to help with our little dilemma.

Upon asking Alexander what he would like for dinner seeing as it was just myself, Marie and the twins home that day (Mikaela, our oldest daughter was staying in town with her gran because she had majorettes practice) he decided he wanted pizza from the pizzeria, this was a no go of course because myself and Marie had already planned to do this on Friday as a little treat and something for us to do as a family. But Alex being his normal self stuck to his guns and refused to budge from Pizza.

Seeing as we had no luck with him Marie then proceeded to ask Maximus: 

Marie: "So Max, seeing as nobody else in the house has any idea's for food what would you like for dinner tonight?"
Max: "I don't know"
Marie: "So you have no idea at all what you would like?"
Max: "Whatever...."


I could see the little glint of red in Marie's eyes as the words left his lips, i honestly thought she was going to have a nervous breakdown, but instead decided to inform me that he was indeed my child, maybe not by blood but 100% by personality. I couldn't do anything but laugh my ass off, i know it probably didn't help the situation but i just couldn't help myself, safe to say Marie was not amused and just left the house leaving myself and the boys laughing about it while she once more had to venture up to the local shop here and find something.

Unfortunately we ended up with sausage and chips for dinner, which well wasn't exactly the best in the world, kinda boring if i have to be honest, but i guess that is what happens when you don't tell someone what you want for dinner.

Is there something out there that you absolutely hate hearing that is similar to this story, i would love to hear it so drop me a comment and let's all share that word that really irritates us to the bone.

But for now i shall bid you all a good day, take care everyone.

I Got Featured.

I can't believe it, i opened my e-mail account the other day to be spammed like crazy from the website Bloggers.com. It is one of those websites that you can place your blog on so that more people can see you and perhaps come and visit and maybe drop you a comment or two, and apparently every week the people that run the website picks a few websites to be featured on their main page.

I was absolutely shocked to have been picked for this week's featured blogs but also honoured, it's really nice to be recognized and don't know anyone in the world that doesn't feel the same.

Unfortunately i changed my twitter account name recently from @ben_moffat to @TheAngryScot and for some reason i am unable to login to their website anymore using my twitter account, this has become a bit annoying since after being a featured blog i have become quite popular on their website and have had alot of friends requests, comments left and private messages but am unable to respond to any of it. So i have contacted bloggers.com and am hoping that they will get back to me with a resolution very soon.

But i thought i would just share my news with everyone because i am absolutely delighted right now, i started out blogging only a few months ago because my fiancée thought i would be pretty good at it, and that it would save me spamming my Facebook & Twitter with my random thoughts and comments, but i didn't think that i would have so many people interested. Now im thirsty for more, of course i blog because i enjoy writing and i find it fun but getting recognition from other bloggers just drives you to want to do more, get featured more and do other fun things.

I have also recently been invited to another website called Triberr.com which has turned out to be another great experience and helped me get my blog out their so i would like to thank @Bobbutterbottom for recommending me, and of course to @Erinwallace  who is the tribe leader. Really happy that i joined the tribe and met so many lovely people.

But for now i will bid everyone farewell, and hope you all have a great day! Mines just got alot better!

Screenshot From My Computer

First School Pictures.

It finally came around, on Tuesday the boys had there very first school picture taken. Marie had picked out some some very nice clothes for them to put on which included a nice shirt and a pair of jeans.

I have to admit i was pretty excited about this event, i mean it's there very first one what parent wouldn't be! Although it always brought back memories of when i was a kid and how much i hated photo day, the thought of standing in a line with all your class mates and then having to sit in a seat in front of everyone and do that fake smile just made me really feel stupid.

But school photo's are a great thing, it not only brings you joy to look at them and gives you a nice photo journal of how they grow up year after year, but it can also be used later in their lives as ammunition when they bring their first ever girlfriend/boyfriend home, I think it's every parents right to do this. I personally had no choice in the matter when i was growing up as my mum and dad insisted that our school pictures were framed and put up on the wall of the staircase leading up the bedrooms and the most recent ones placed on the wall in the livingroom. I mean talk about embarrassing!
At least now i get to have my own revenge, taking these embarrassing things out on my children, i mean us parents deserve a little bit of fun don't we?

Unfortunately i did what every dad in the world shouldn't i combed there hair made it all nice and looking respectable and then proceeded to give them their baseball caps to put on, oops i guess you could say. I neglected to think that placing their baseball caps on their heads would cause their hair to become once more a mess, so the preview of the photo's got sent to us and of course i did a stupid thing according to Marie, she hasn't said anything but i know she's thinking it.
Safe to say i have learned a valuable lesson today, but i thought i would take the previews of the pictures and stick them up here so that everyone could see them, i'll apologise to everyone i guess for their hair hehe.

   (Alexander "Left" & Maximus "Right")

Apart from the hair, and the fact it seems that Alexander decided to take one of his buttons out the photo's are brilliant and look forward to getting them home soon, so that we can buy some frames and put them on the wall for everyone that ever enters our house to see.

But until next time, i bid everyone a great day.

He Just Refuses.

Well the day finally came and we could say goodbye to Alexander's cast, i got to say and maybe it's wrong of me being a parent and all, but i was so happy when Monday came around and we could cut the damn thing off. Not that it was much of a problem to deal with him, but having to push the wheelchair up that staircase on a daily basis for 3½ weeks just killed me.
Perhaps that actually says more about me, and the fact i need to get back into shape, or at least get to a shape that doesn't consist of weighing 93kg (205lbs).

Marie had told me that on the way back from school on Monday, he was telling Max our other son how he was going to run and run so fast that Max wouldn't be able to catch him and continued to tell him all the other fun stuff he was going to do now that it was time for his cast to be removed.

However the reality was alot more different, instead of running around and jumping up and down and doing everything he said he was going to do, he has instead decided that he can't walk still or at least not properly, so instead of walking normally he places the foot that was broken onto it's toes and then hops on it until his other foot lands. Basically limping along, we have tried everything to explain to him that nothing will happen if he tries to walk normally, but instead of trying he just stands there and comes out with things like "I don't want to".
Trying to show him that he is already putting all his weight on that foot anyway just doesn't seem to sink in to him, i'm just not to sure what to do next but leave him to it and hope that in the next coming days that he just decides to try.

Even when Marie spoke to the after-school personal yesterday when collecting him how he had been, since it was his first full day without his crutches and wheelchair, they said that he had not attempted once to walk on it normally and was just limping around, and if he was going to go from one room to another instead of even walking he would crawl instead.

I have to admit that i do feel sorry for him still, i think it's a shame he is obviously still a bit scared that if he tries to walk normally that his foot might break again, but at the same time and i guess this is where the bad parent comes out of me, i think he is just being silly, and needs to just do it.

I have tried all forms of motivation and so has Marie but nothing seems to work, and if i am honest i got a bit annoyed with him yesterday while walking up to the school, since what is normally a healthy 10/15 minute walk turned into nearly a 20/25 minute walk.
Granted there is no rush to get up there, but i just couldn't stop myself being aggravated at him for not trying. I realise that this is the wrong thing to do, but i think it's just my nature and one of my many flaws as a person/parent.

Anyone had any experience with this before? and if so how did you deal with it and handle it. This is the first time any of my children have broken anything, and i have absolutely no idea about how to deal with things after the fact, we have been assured from the doctor at Marie's work that his foot has healed now and he should have no problems walking on it but still he refuses.
So if anyone has any tips or tricks to help us out, please feel free to drop me a comment below.

But until next time, take care everyone!

The Meeting.

Today i had my first ever meeting with my new appointed job coach from the company TechROi that are based in a town quite close to where i live called Trollhättan.

If i had to be honest with myself i was pretty damn nervous this morning about the whole thing, i think it was probably fear of the unknown. I think Franklin D. Roosevelt said it the best with his statement "The Only Thing To Fear Is Fear Itself". Although i don't think i had anything to be nervous about but it still didn't stop the whole feeling i had inside.

Basically the whole point of the job coach is to help me get a job, they can't obviously physically get me a job themselves but they will help with things such as making my C.V. better and making it more aimed towards the company that i am applying to, it is something i need alot of help with since my current C.V. is pretty awful to say the least, so i think some pointers in that direction would be pretty handy. She has also said that she has a boss at her company that deals with I.T. positions so once we have revamped my C.V. slightly and got it looking a little better that she will take it to him for his point of view as to how we can improve it further which seems very positive.

Another thing we will go over is interview techniques, this is something i am in desperate need off, the main reason is that i have not been in a interview for a job in i can't count how many years now and even when i was doing them i always left them feeling a bit awkward, you know at the end of the whole interview the interviewee comes out with those dreaded words, "Is there anything you would like to ask?" i have never ever been able to work out what the hell you are meant to say, obvious things come to mind like pay, holidays etc but i think going into a interview and asking those types of questions make you seem like you are only interested in one thing and that is money. So in the past i have normally ended up just saying "No, i think everything has been covered and i am happy with everything" which again is probably not the best way to end a interview.

On top of all that we will be going over what to wear, i know that might seem a little bit strange to some people, but here in Sweden things are done very differently to other places around the world, i think the word that springs to mind when i think of people in the work place in Sweden is "Casual" the first time i ever entered the job centre here, i was greeted by a gentleman in shorts and a t-shirt, i honestly couldn't take my eyes off him and remember thinking to myself, what the hell is he doing? If i cast my mind back to Scotland and the way the people dress there it is alot more formal, Shirts, Ties and Suits. Unless your a delivery driver or something like that but even they wear a company uniform of some kind, pair of trousers and a company t-shirt or something, so i think some pointers in how to dress for certain types of interviews is indeed required.

But overall i came out of my first meeting with Kicki (Yes that is her name, very strange i know) feeling very positive, i was told before from friends around Sweden that there is many job coaches in Sweden who don't really care and don't want to do the job they have been set to do, but it was certainly not the impression i received from mines, i was given a pen drive from her so that i am able to place my C.V. on so that we are able to work on it and other items that we shall no doubt do in our 3 months that we have together, and a very informative binder with lots of information about C.V's and other aspects of the job coach experience. So i am currently home with alot of information to digest, and alot of things to get done before she rings me to confirm our next meeting. But i have a really great feeling about how the whole process went and i am looking forward to our next meeting.
If it continues to go as well as this one did, i'm sure that i shall be in some sort of employment in no time.

But for now i think i shall bid everyone farewell and go and have some dinner as i am absolutely starving, so until next time, take care.

Site Updated & New Facebook Page.

Sometimes Sundays is a great time to just sit back and relax and do nothing right? and sometimes Sundays are a great time to make some changes, seeing as my little boys were away to their dads for the weekend, i thought today would be a great day to make some changes and the main change i made was to my blog.

I had been sitting for a few weeks now thinking that i should really update the blog a bit as it was looking a bit outdated and just generally not as good as i think it could have been so i spoke to Marie my fiancée who normally deals with all the ins and outs of my blog and asked if she could update it for me and make some changes, and well this is what she has come up with.
To be honest looking back at my old blog design and colour scheme, i have no idea why i liked it in the first place, it was pretty good but i think this design and colour scheme is alot better than before. More professional perhaps and certainly alot cleaner looking.

On top of making all these changes to the layout and general design of the blog i had Marie change my comments as well and decided to install Disqus, the main reason for this, is alot of people said that it had alot better functionality than the default blogger comments design, so i'm going to give it a little try out and see how things go with it.

Along with all the above blog changes i decided that i would make myself my very own Facebook Page as it seems that alot of bloggers are doing this now, or have been doing it for a while. It will also probably save me from spamming my personal page with new blog posts etc, so if your a normal follower of my blog and like to keep up to date then show me some love and head over to Facebook and like the page for me, the more people that follow me the happier i will be, or the angrier than normal. Either way you should do it, i would love to create a little community on there.

But i think that is all for just now folks, i have a really important meeting tomorrow with my job coach, it's actually the first ever meeting i'm going to have and i must admit i am quite nervous about it, but i am sure things will go fine. For some reason she decided that we would meet at the local library in Lidköping which is a bit how can i put it..... stupid, since it means that we will be unable to have coffee or anything and sitting for a hour or so without being able to drink anything is going to be a challenge.
However i will let you all know how it goes tomorrow when i come home i guess, but for now i think i will head off and watch some television and relax and get myself prepared for the day ahead tomorrow.

So let me know what you think of the new design.

Until next time....

Something That Doesn't Happen Normally.

If i had to say one thing that doesn't happen normally i think it would have to be, being given a compliment from any of my children. Everyday we hear the same thing what great food you made mum, and mum thanks for doing this and that, but you will never normally hear is something positive about me.
In the house i'm normally the ogre, the bad cop,  the enforcer or whatever you want to call it so compliments or gratitude is not something i regularly hear.

So boy was i a happy bunny this morning when Marie phoned me to inform me that she had attempted to take the wheelchair up the stairs, it's something i've been doing for the last week or two when taking the boys to school because i got so sick and tired of having to push it up a stupid hill where cars and lorries etc were driving by, and i actually found it A) quicker and B) easier.

Unfortunately Marie didn't have the same kind of luck and later informed me that she was indeed absolutely knackered after getting him up there, if you don't know myself and Marie we are pretty unfit people so trying to climb those stairs on foot without pushing anything is a challenge in itself, and adding a wheelchair with a 20+kg child to the mix just makes it even more unpleasant. 

Apparently on the way up the stairs the boys were singing my praise like there was no tomorrow, saying things such as "Mum, Ben is much better at this than you are" and "Mum, Ben does this alot faster than you, and he is not as tired at the end".
I mean this stuff is absolute priceless, i was so happy when Marie phoned to tell me. It's just nice to hear once in a while that indeed Ben you do kick ass and do something better than mummy.

So to my two little boys i would like to say "Thank you, you guys rock!" and to Marie, well without being mean and vindictive "Hahahaha, you suck!"

The Boys At The Järpås Football Cup

When You Think, Things Can't Get Worse.

When you pay for a service you expect it to be the best that can be provided correct? but when that service involves your children you expect it to be exceptional, or at least that is what i expect. But the service we are currently getting from our after-school program located inside our local school here is anything but.

I decided after the whole Alexander and the playing outside with his cast on in the sand (you can read about it >HERE<) that i would give them another chance, as i thought i was a little bit harsh towards them on the matter of letting my son who has a cast on his foot play outside in the rain.

But it seems that once more when i decide to give these people another chance they go around and throw that chance right back in my face. So you are all probably wondering what the hell they have done this time? Well yesterday Marie came in from collecting the kids from school and said to me something along the lines off:

Marie: "Can you tell your son to stay in school?"
Me: "Which one?"
Marie: "The only one that can walk"
Me: "And why the hell will i tell him to stay in school? where the hell was he?"
Marie: "Apparently him and 2 other boys decided to take a little walk outside of the school, the teacher went after them after realising they had disappeared and found them under the underpass"

Now it's kind of hard to explain but if you remember my post about my Nemesis, you will get the basic idea of how far they were away from the school grounds, so you have the school on top of the hill, and then you have my nemesis the staircase from hell and then there is a small path not to sure how many yards it is maybe 500 yards or something around that, and then you have the underpass.
In terms of how long it takes to walk from school to the underpass? you are probably talking approximately 5 minutes walk, especially for a couple of young children.

Now i am not entirely sure how long it took for the after-school teacher to realise they had gone missing, or how long they had actually been gone for but i mean.... WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!
We pay these people to take care of our children, and yet we find out one of our children has been 5 minutes outside of school grounds playing where there is a bloody busy road, not to mention you can't trust a single person in the world these days, ANYTHING COULD HAVE HAPPENED!.

Ok it wasn't entirely the schools fault, or the personal as the kids should not have decided to go walking out of grounds, but i know for one my son is only 6 years old and he is still learning right from wrong, but the teachers are well older than that and should have taught them by now that they are not allowed past X part of the school grounds, but NOOOOOOOOO they didn't.

Safe to say i was fucking angry as hell and seriously want to go up and smack them all about the head, but i decided that, that was probably not the best course of action, but if anything happens again and i mean the smallest thing the headmaster up there better have a god damn good explanation for it, otherwise she will face my wrath and a angry scottish person raging at you is not something you want i can guarantee you that.

I mean seriously, what type of fucking morons is this school employing, does there interviews go something along the lines off:

Interviewer: "Are you a complete and utter moron with a IQ of 3"
Interviewee: "Oh i can do better than that, im a complete moron but with the IQ of 1"
Interviewer: "PERFECT! your hired, welcome to the school"

So there you have it, once more i have given the school a chance and once more i have been slapped in the face with my chance, safe to say three strikes and your out, and they are already on strike two!

The Last Week, Thank God.

Firstly i would like to apologise for the lack of blogging over the last few days, basically i haven't really been in the mood and on top of that nothing has really been happening. I have spent most of my time over the last few days just lying around the house watching TV and playing computer games to keep myself amused.

But anyway let's get back to the topic at hand, finally we have reached the last week of Alex in his cast, i say thank god because it's been a absolute nightmare if i'm truly honest. Not the fact he has the cast on but more along the lines of it's a pain in the ass to push that damn wheelchair he has up the hill to school, i know i am not the fittest person in the world, infact i could probably be described as a pie eating son of a bitch.

I don't think i'm the only one though, i think Alex himself is had enough of his cast, he's actually done really well and has completely mastered his crutches, but obviously he can't use them for to long as his little arms start to ache but he's done really well with them i have to admit, it's actually quite amusing to watch him cause he can now build up some amount of speed on them.

But i think that is enough for today, i am a little bit hungry so waiting for Marie to come home so we can get some dinner and then a night relaxing on the couch, with perhaps a movie or two. So until next time!

Stupid After School Care

Yesterday Marie came into the house absolutely raging yesterday, initially i thought it was because she was missing her cigarettes but how wrong was i? Yesterday it was on of those days that was filled with nothing but heavy rain, and i'm not talking about a light drizzle of rain, i'm talking heavy heavy down pour and this continued all day and well into the night.

So when Marie returned home yesterday with the kids from the after school care raging i asked what was wrong to be informed that the idiots at the after school care had allowed our son Alex to go out in the pissing rain and play in the sand, why? because he asked if he could and apparently the staff up there don't have a brain that tells them that allowing a child at the age of 6 with a cast on his foot to play in the sand is stupid.

I mean seriously who in there right mind lets any child play in a sand pit when it's absolutely hammering down outside with rain? i have been sitting racking my brains since it happened, trying to figure out why and the only explanation i can come to is that they are all idiots up there.

Marie is constantly saying that i am never happy with any of the teachers or school personal since i always manage to find something wrong with them, but yesterday literally took the biscuit (some strange UK saying). It seems when i decide to give people a chance they just turn around and show me exactly why i thought they were incapable in the first place. I might have been a bit less angry at them if they had perhaps covered his cast in a plastic bag or something, you know something to keep his cast dry.

BUT...... yes you guessed correctly they didn't. They allowed him out in the rain and in the sandbox with his cast and nothing covering it to keep it dry.

Safe to say when i went up to drop them off this morning i grabbed Alexander and told him that he was not to go outside and play in the sandbox today if it was raining because it was stupid to do so with his foot not covered, and all the personal could say, was yes we have made note that he can't do that.
Honestly i would never hit a woman in my whole entire life, but when the woman from the school said that i seriously wanted to grab something and beat her over the head with it, but instead i just replied with that's great to hear it was a bit stupid for you to let him out there in the first place, to which she just sheepishly looked away from me with a grunt of hmm.

I don't know if i was a bit harsh, and i certainly don't want the personal up at the school to take a dislike to us but i feel that we were in the right, what do you think?

Arbetsförmedlingen (Job Centre)

For anyone that read my blog yesterday, you should be aware that today i had an appointment with the local job centre once more, i was a bit apprehensive about going today for a few reasons but the main one being the stupid idiot that is normally behind the information desk. 

For anyone not quite sure what i am talking about if you read my post Arbetsförmedlingen (Job Centre) <Part1> you will surly understand the reason why.

But lucky for me when i entered the building it wasn't the resident douchebag that was stood behind the counter but some other women, who turned out to be more than helpful and nice, which in turn made me feel a little at ease about the whole situation i was about to embark upon.

Not only was i welcomed by a lovely woman but upon turning around to go sit down at the waiting area i also found myself sitting next to a old friend of mines who i had met while attending the SFI course here in Sweden, i think it must have been about 3 years now since the last time i saw her but we had a good old catch up which was great since it took my mind off the meeting that was ahead of me, she seemed to be doing good for herself although had found herself in the same situation as i am currently due to the company she was working with having to close its doors (Stupid economic crisis). But she had been lucky to have got herself a drivers licence while she was working so i guess that will help her get a job.

So finally 11am came and i was greeted by the person i was to have my interview with (Ulrika) and no before anyone gets the funny idea she was not called Ulrika Jonsson, although quite funnily enough she was a tall blonde woman. But after shaking hands and being escorted to her office i noticed the thing that was going to make this interview extremely difficult .... Ulrika had a Woman Moustache. I don't know about anyone else but for some very strange reason every time i see a woman with a moustache i am instantly drawn to it every single time i'm trying to talk to them, so instead of looking in her eyes i find myself having a conversation with this blonde moustache. 

I don't think she picked up on it, because she continued to be very nice towards me and she helped me the best she could, so i guess i should be thankful for that.

As the meeting continued i think had to ask the moustache about 18 times over to explain what she was talking about, i believe that she forgot at times that i was not a Swedish person and continued to use Swedish slang, for anyone that doesn't know the Swedish language it's probably one of the hardest languages in the world to learn and on top of that the Swedish people have decided to introduce slang to their language as well. Even though i have lived here for 5 years now i still cannot understand a single word of there slang and i don't think i ever will, when we are taught Swedish we are taught the correct words and no slang is given or used, so when it comes to them using it you find yourself left in the world of confusion, but she eventually took the hint after the 18th time of me asking her what she meant and reverted to using only real Swedish.

The Agreement

I was informed when i made the appointment that i would be given a interview with someone that spoke both Swedish and English, just incase there was words i couldn't find in my vocabulary or if the interviewer said something i was unable to understand (Or decided to speak in slang), but after our conversation began it became very apparent that she couldn't speak the English language, either that or she was deliberately not speaking English to me so that i would be forced to speak Swedish, either way i managed to get through the whole thing without speaking English which was left me feeling extremely proud of myself, ok there was the odd word here and there that i couldn't find so i would say them in English to which she would quickly inform me of what the Swedish word was (Pretty much forgotten half of them now, but some of them stuck). 

But at least now i have a game plan in action, we have came up with an agreement (Picture above) and i have been given a job coach that best suits my job requirements, and hopefully i should be hearing from them by either telephone or mail as to when we shall meet, so i'm really excited and very hopeful for the future. I had explained that some of my Swedish friends had said that some job coaches were not the best and basically didn't really want to help and was advised that sometimes that is the case, but i have just to contact her directly if i feel this and they will deal with it, but i have to make sure that i give 110% to this, and that is exactly what i plan on doing.

So all in all a great day today, what was first apprehension turned into security and i managed to come out of the meeting feeling alot better about myself than i did going into it.

So let's just hope that something positive comes out of this, i have this job coach for the next 3 months so basically up until December this year and if i am still unable to find employment then i will have another meeting with Ulrika to see where we can go from there.

But for now i think i shall bid you all farewell, i hope your day has been as good as mine has. Take care everyone.

A Interesting Week Upon Us.

Picture taken from the internet.

Well finally after months of nagging my fiancée i finally managed to get her to make Chicken Fried Rice yesterday, i used to love getting it from our local chinese place back in Scotland and i haven't had it for such a long time so i had been asking Marie to make it for me.

Unfortunately it didn't quite turn out exactly like the chinese restaurant makes it but it was pretty damn close and i personally thoroughly enjoyed it, could have used the prawn crackers to make it even better but it seems that you are unable to buy them here in Sweden which is a bit of a let down but oh well.

But as the title says it seems that this week will be turning into quite a interesting one to say the least, i finally received a letter from the Arbetsförmedlingen (Job Centre) so i have to go into town tomorrow for the appointment at 11am, quite annoying if i have to be honest about the time, since the train into town is something like 9am so i shall have to sit and wait around in town for a couple of hours before i can actually go in and speak to anyone, but i guess such is life.
I'm just hoping that everything goes well, if i have to be totally honest i am quite nervous about it. I just hope that i am able to put across everything i want to say good enough in Swedish for them to understand me, i know that my Swedish is pretty good but i always seem to get this mental block and get really nervous, i'm one of these stupid perfectionists you see, so whenever i have to try and speak the language to anyone i start second guessing myself about if i am using the correct ending to the word or tense.

But i am sure that i shall be fine, if the worst comes to the worst i'm pretty sure that they can speak English, although i would much prefer not to have to go down that route, i'm also hoping that the idiot from my last encounter with them isn't in tomorrow, i honestly don't know how i will handle him on my own. I was quite lucky last time to have Marie to back me up, but this time i'm going solo but i guess in the worst case scenario i could always just punch him in the face. (Ok maybe i won't do that, seeing as i would really like to gain employment and it may hinder my chances.)


Not only that but my fiancée Marie has decided that she will give up smoking, she has been at me trying to get me to stop with her, but i don't feel like this is the time for me to stop, i just don't want to. I'm aware that it would be good financially and of course great for my health, but right now i am just not ready for it. Maybe in time i will be as i really don't feel like smoking for the rest of my life but right now it just isn't going to happen.
I'm just dreading that with Marie stopping that she is going to turn into a living nightmare to live with, i have stopped once before for about a month and i know how hard it is to stop, even when you really want to and i also know the type of moods you find yourself in, but i suppose that it will be worth it in the long run, and if all else fails there is always outside to run to.

So why not head over to her blog and wish her the best of luck, you can read her post about it >HERE<

But for now i think i will head off and get some housework done, since i am the housework king, i shall update tomorrow with the progress of this appointment, cross your fingers for me that it goes well.

He Made Me Doubt Myself All Day.

It really amazes me even now how children are able to make their parents doubt themselves, even if you think you are 100% correct on your judgement you still end up having something in the back of your mind niggling away at you as to whether you are right or not.

This happened to myself and my partner Marie yesterday with our little boy Alexander, as everyone knows by now my little boy broke his left foot about a week and a half ago and yesterday he woke up at 6am (Myself and Marie were already up) crying that he was in pain, funnily enough a few minutes before he started crying we heard a large bang on the wall to his bedroom.

So when i went in to see what was wrong with him, he said that he was in extreme pain in his foot so after asking where he was in pain he showed us that it was on the side of his foot, because of the bang against the wall we thought to ourselves that he had just knocked it against the wall and that was what had caused the pain so we gave him some medicine and took him up and got him to sit on the couch, we were in two minds whether or not to take him back into hospital but something inside of me was saying that he was playing on it, because only a few minutes after he was up he was acting fine again. Until Marie came back through from the kitchen and he started his sobbing.

Marie had asked me to get his attention and while he was looking at me Marie pressed down on various points of his foot and guess what no reaction, so we decided that we would send him School and i had said to him that if he was still in pain by the time lunch had passed that he could ask his teacher to phone me and i would come up and get him from school.

Shortly after 14:20 my mobile phone began to rang and it was the school, saying that he had been fine all day but was now complaining he was once more in pain in his foot again so off to went to pick him and his brother up, school had actually finished and he was at the after-school program so it was no issues, but i decided that since i thought he was playing on it i would take him down the long staircase that leads down from school to where we live instead of taking him down the long road, lets just say all the way down instead of crying he was in pain he was laughing his head off, so once more i was left feeling like there was nothing wrong and infact he was playing on it.

But sure to form as soon we entered the house and i placed him back on the couch and Marie came through he once more began to sob and complain that he was once more in pain, so i fetched some more medicine for him while Marie began with our dinner. Safe to say after a few minutes the pain had once more vanished and everything was fine up until bed time, i had advised Marie when we came in that she should perhaps change the bandage on his foot, since the night before he "apparently" had all this pain she had changed the bandage around the cast.

So once more he began to cry that he was in pain, this time the pain had moved from the side of the foot to the top of the foot, so Marie went away and fetched some "new" medicine, unknown to Alexander this was simply a tablespoon worth of water which he was told was special mummy medicine that takes away every pain in the world, but to put our minds at ease we decided we would change the bandage on his cast again and this time literally just placed it on there.

Without a word of a lie, after five minutes of giving him the "special" medicine and changing his bandage he was right as rain again, no pain anywhere, not even when we pressed down on places he had complained with  in agony.

But it still amazes me that a child can make you doubt yourself so easily, even if you are 100% sure he/she is just playing on it, they have this special way of making you think otherwise. I'm just so happy that there wasn't anything wrong and that my gut feeling was correct, but you never know do you?

The Broken Foot.

Has this ever happened to you? share your tales with me.

I'm The Housework King!

Oh if it only that statement was true, housework would be alot more fun i can tell you that. But jesus what a day i've had today, i mean i don't like to boast or anything but i am the housework king! maybe even a god? who knows all i know is that i've been rocking this housework crap for the last week and surprisingly been enjoying it. Am i mad?

I came to realise at the start of the week after our big Sunday clean that we normally do that we were wasting our weekends or at least Marie was wasting her weekend cleaning all Sunday long to make the house all nice again, and i came to realise if i do everything the same day it happens then we could simply just chill out and do nothing all weekend but enjoy the kids and each other (haha like that's really going to happen).

So i hear everyone say well didn't you already do that, since you spend 99.9% of your time at home anyways while Marie is away to work, and the answer to that question is LAZY B**TARD. I think i have been that, believe it or not i'm a gigantic clean freak i mean i hate mess, i personally blame my mum for it since she is also one of these freaks that gets up at 7am in the morning, has a quick cup of coffee and then starts hoovering and cleaning the house from top to bottom, honestly sometimes when you walk in her house you would think you were walking into a showroom it's that clean. So i honestly don't know why i have never decided to do housework on a daily basis. 

It's not like i didn't do anything and left Marie to it all, i would hoover and as you have read previously about my rug hate that was no simple task.

Well let me tell you i think today i kicked everything into high gear, i got up at my normal time of 5am with Marie and done my normal crap around the computer, eventually i grabbed the kids up and took them up to school, since Alex has broken his legs i have found out that those stairs i was going on about in a earlier post has a friend who is also a new nemesis of mines, it's called a fricken steep road and when your pushing a 20+ kg child up there you wish you could just roll over and die.

So once i had taken the kids i came back and decided that before i did anything i would have a little nap, you know daddy naps are awsome when you don't have a fiancée and kids in the house to ask you if your sleeping every five minutes lol. 

But after my nap i decided it was time to rock and roll, i got out the hoover and vacuumed all the downstairs, yes i know i should have done the upstairs to, but i'll do that tomorrow ok so get off my back. i also attacked the bathroom again and got that completely spotless, including the bath i might add (i know, i know, i rock!) and then i cleaned up the kitchen. So once more the house is spotless, believe it or not since i had kept on top of it all this week it took only about 45 minutes to get all that done.

But after i had finished with all that cleaning, i decided that i should really get the grass cut, Marie had done it a week or so ago, but for some reason i'm guessing due to the heavy rain we have had and then the bursts of sun in between that the damn thing to decided to grow like it was on some sort of growth hormone, i expected it take me at least a couple of hours even though it wasn't that long but i seemed to be on some sort of spree today as within 30-45 minutes it was cut down as well.

So this week i have learned some valuable lessons about housekeeping and that is if you do it when it needs done it doesn't build up and you have to waste ours on end doing it later.

WHO'S THE KING??