H.R.H Prince Carl-Philip & Princess Sofia are married...

Yeah, 10 status updates on facebook later and I decided to make a blogpost instead.

So the big day is over. It was a beautiful day indeed. Just wanted to share my thoughts on a few things.

So, what about the guest top list?

I think our Crown Princess Victoria made a fantastic choice wearing
H&Ms conscious collection.
She also wore what is known as "Sibylla's tiara", a great choice if you ask me.
Also and of course we see the light blue sash of the great order of Seraphim across her chest.
She certainly made a statement and she looked as great as ever doing so.

Princess Madeleine looked radiant with her baby bump stealing most of the focus.
She's wearing her mother's private tiara that is a favorite of Madeleine's.
The blue sash is of course worn by the youngest of the King's children as well.
Considering she's about to have a baby any day, she is incredibly fresh faced and as always and in my opinion, the most beautiful princess ever.




The winner of the night though, as far as guests goes, is unquestionably Crown Princess Mary of Denmark. This is a woman who never fails to be both stylish and classy. Given that I do love my vintage, and I do love my blue, this 50s style creation hit an absolute homerun.
Mary to me, is also in the lead when it comes to wedding gowns. Her 2004 nuptials to the danish crown prince has yet to be outdone.
To top this day off we had the great pleasure to see her wearing her wedding tiara again.

Our Queen Silvia wore the clear blue Leuchtenberg sapphires.
Regal as always but I do prefer her in Queen Sophia's tiara shown on the left.

So, what about the bride herself. The girl who woke up as Ms Sofia Hellqvist and became H.R.H Princess Sofia of Sweden before the day was over.
My prediction from this morning:
"Obviously it will be of a more classic cut. I'm thinking a very probable a-line. (Maybe mermaid if she's more adventures like Charlene of Monaco but in my book it does not make any top lists) Im thinking kind of Kate Middleton but less romantic, more classy. I don't think she will follow Victoria and Madeleine's choice of sleeves. It will be a classic sleeve, don't know if she's opting for the longer version or a simple cap sleeve though.
I am hoping we get to see something other than one of the button-tiaras adorning her head! I would love it if she actually got a new one. And most likely a cathedral mantilla veil to top it all off."

Let's break it down shall we. First we can conclude that I was very right about the following:
A-line
Classic Sleeve
Cathedral Mantilla Veil.
Check, check and check.


Moving on to my comparison to Duchess Kathrine's wedding gown. Which the whole world absolutely loved and I thought was a knock off, nothing more. Let's go back.
When Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier of Monaco back in -56 she wore a very, I dare say THE MOST iconic of wedding dresses.
I remember calling that Kate indeed would take inspiration from Grace Kelly. Any smart girl would in her situation. Though I had not anticipated she'd totally rip it. That was a huge let down, and in my world quite unforgivable..haha. You don't f*cking rip GKs dress, if you are not an idiot. So sorry Kate, that was idiotic. I mean even the flowers...like really? Kate sure looked pretty, but so does the Marilyn Monroe-drag queen's in Vegas.

And when the bride emerged then sure enough. A dress very reminiscent of Kate's though just as I said, less romantic but more classic.
I would not have been disappointed to see Sofia choose something a little more chic. She's a spunky girl. Modern and independent and I felt she played it a little safe with her dress. But she sure was gorgeous.

What made me even more excited though was that she did indeed wear a new tiara.
An assumed wedding gift from the King and Queen.
We will most certainly see her wear this many times in the future.
A gorgeous piece of jewelry even if I question the choice of emeralds.

As the Swedish Royals arrived one by one I saw most of my preferred tiaras sitting pretty on other princess' heads. At the end it was down to a new one or the smaller button tiara, worn by Princess Madeleine in the picture below and in my opinion the worst one our royals have. So indeed, I was excited to see a brand new one on our brand new princess' head.

All and all I loved this wedding. It was personal, modern. It differed greatly from the usually quite stiff and much etiquette-ruled royal affairs. Something people seem to think is Sofia's influence.
I have been watching TV for 9hrs straight now so with this I say thank you and good night.

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10 - One moment

Today, on September 7th, I can't help but think of one very specific moment.

The moment when you look a friend in the eyes and you can read determination in the lines on his face.
The moment when you look him in the eyes and and some part of you know that things just aren't right.
The moment when you are completely incapable of imagining what is to come.

The moment when you find out that it was the last time you ever saw him.

One moment.
One single moment, that was all.

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9 - My faith

I'm Linette and I'm an agnostic.
Why?
Because I think it's pretty conceited to claim we would have the slightest idea of what's going on.
We have the one side:
"But we don't claim anything, we just know in our hearts, we believe..that is faith!"
Then we have the other:
"What are you retarded? Show me proof!"

Does any one of them seem reasonable?

In my mind it goes:
A man in the sky? Really? I'm going with Epicurus on this one:

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?"
And to the other side of the coin:
Stop overestimating your own abilities. Our tiny little brains have no possible way of even being close to comprehend what is really going on. I mean it's the same as "Yeah the world's flat!" I understand the reasoning from the perspective we have today, and I am leaning more towards that, than any almighty God who gave his only son and so on.. But still, chill out, we'll all find out when our time comes.

You're all being unreasonable. The one thing we actually DO know is that we DON'T know..
Don't get me wrong, I don't care what you do. If you wanna spend every Sunday in church or if you wanna give an atheist rant on youtube, knock yourselves out. Just stop shoving your damn beliefs down my throat, I don't care.
"God bless you!" - Yeah, Santa gives his love...? What am I supposed to say? Thank you? I really don't know so I usually go with the very universal.. "uhm, ok."

Anyway, what do I believe?
As stated, I believe we do not know. I believe I am merely a human being, with no possible way of knowing which path is the right one. I can admire some people's conviction.. But what a bummer it would be to die, soul flying around aimlessly without a sight of any pearly gates.. Finally peeking through a window to heaven only to see a bearded man with 72 virgins..
"Oh crap, really, the muslims were right? Damn it..."
Or imagine the horror of expecting heaven and instead being pushed out a lady's vagina?
"Reincarnation? WTF? Ewww!"

I'm going with an open mind here, to avoid any disappointments.

Have I ever prayed? Isn't there any part of me that do believe in God?
Yes and no.

I have indeed prayed. When you feel like there is nowhere else to turn, then yeah.. It's worth a shot. Like I said, I do not know. I am also fully aware that me praying is a product of me growing up in a (somewhat) christian society. Although Sweden is one of the most secularized countries in the world, we still have a culture based largely on christian traditions. Would I have been born in Thailand, I'm pretty sure I would have gone about it differently.
So yes, some people may call me an emergency room christian, I still won't say I believe in God..
(or as my beloved cousin so brilliantly put it "You're a closet-christian!")

And, do I believe in the Bible?

No, absolutely not.
I do not believe in the garden of eden, I do not believe that some crucified dude was a son of this God-fellow.. I do not believe a single word of it actually. I do appreciate some of it. The sermon of the mount is absolutely magnificent. If we all were to take that to heart and really live it, we would have peace, we would have love, we would have mercy.
But we're assholes, so we don't. We may claim to, we may even preach it ourselves.. yet turn our backs to those in need, claim that love that goes against our cultural norm is sinful and we still slaughter each other for crying out loud. I mean wtf?

I also want to separate organized religion from faith. It is a vast difference in my eyes, and I do not care much for the former.

So, do I believe in something?

Yes, yes I kind of do. I have a hard time accepting that this would be it. That we would be it. Cause now THAT would be dissappointing.
Now what would that be? What's out there? What's the point of all this?

Well, that is anybody's best guess.

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8 - In my purse

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7 - This is what I wore today

The same as all the other days...
Real fancy..

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6 - My day

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5 - What is love?

Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more...
Sorry, but it is a must.. Just like you can't leave the following sentence unfinished;
Now, this is a story all 'bout how my life got flipped, turned upside down and I'd like to take a minute just sit right there:

Eh? You thought it, don't even try!

This was kind of a cheesy one.
What is love..

Well, different for everybody I'd say, and different for each and every individual relationship.
Impossible to generalize.
I love the feeling of familiarity, memories, history.
I love laughter, especially that heartwarming laughter that you share with someone when you laugh at something that is slightly shameful, that probably shouldn't be laughed at.. It is never as funny as then.

I love the feeling of complete and utter trust. Even if people hurt me, that feeling of certainty that it surely wasn't their intention, they'd never want to.
I love the feeling of a warm a soft kitty that's sleeping in my arms like I wouldn't let anything in the world happen to them.
I love when people call me just to say,
"Hey, haven't talked in a while, I miss you, how are you?"
Or when they call specifically to tell me about something going on in their lives.
I love the feeling of fighting with someone, being so angry you think you could rip the persons head off their shoulder but at the same time still loving them.

Is that love? Yeah, to me that's love. And so, so much more than that.

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Yes, yes..

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4 - This is what I ate today

Because I'm just that cool.

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3 - My parents

There were three rules in my house while growing up. Three rules that always applied and that I still to this day try to live by, and still to this day have to remind myself of:

1 - With freedom comes responsibility.
2 - Two wrongs doesn't make a right.
3 - You are not granted the right to be mean or bad just because someone else might be.

My parents have not always been given the gratitude they deserve.
My father worked three jobs at one point to keep us fed and dry while mom did her best to make bricks without straws.
Yet we never lacked. I never noticed. We had everything we could possibly need and probably lots more than that.

My mom was never cheap with what we had. She has taught me to appreciate a simpler life. A life where buying jam or processed food feels like cheating. I've grown up on home grown, home baked, home cooked treats of all kinds. Did I get honey puffs for breakfast I won, cause it was rare. I look at her now, still pickling her home grown veggies, making marmalade and stuff and I poke fun of her for it. "The war is over mom! It was over in -45..you can stop, food rations are no more. You know there are shelves full of jam at the store right?" But I can only wish that one day I will find the energy to actually obtain her knowledge and feed my future children the same healthy, unprocessed meals and not the kind of junk I now shove into my body.
She read to me a lot. And she sang, and nobody can sing a more beautiful lullaby than my mother, I swear.
She's a nurturer. A stubborn and very...rational one but still. Her ability to instinctively know what people need is something she must have inherited from my grandma. I don't have the same ability. Especially when people need it most I feel like I freak out and get stuck and can't think of a single, sensible thing to do.
I believe those two have always had a sixth sense.. "Aha - my student daughter is starving. I just know it.. though I haven't talked to her in a week.. I better swing by with left overs and two grocery bags!"
If she hadn't, all those countless times, I might have very well starved to death..or frozen..or ya know, pitied myself into oblivion.. cause sometimes all you need is your mom at the door saying "Ok enough. Get up, get dressed and get a fucking handle on your situation." Luckily it has been a long time since that horror struck me..

My dad. Oh my dad is Superman. I used to truly believe that.
I thought there wasn't anything in the world that man didn't know or couldn't do. I used to sit up on his shoulders and look out over the world and feel so completely and utterly safe.
He caught criminals for a living, he was an army ranger, a total badass in my innocent blue eyes.
As I got older I realized that my father was more of a normal human being, an incredibly strong and smart one.. but still, there are things in this world that could actually hurt him other than kryptonite.
So he went from army spec op to the police department to being a politician to becoming a university teacher. As if all those things were just another day at the office. Myself, I need three days of psychological preparation to be able to deal with a grocery shopping trip. So, still.. not far from superman. If I actually put on pants on a day off I feel secretly proud of myself for accomplishing that much. Army ranger? Yeah, come see me at the psych ward early morning of day 2, cause that's where you'd find me.
I have always had the ability to find that soft spot in my superman-dads heart. Did I take advantage of that in my rebellious teen years? Would I have been much of a rebellious teenager if I didn't? Or did he simply let me? I will never know. But he is a big bad ass softie though. He did teach me right from wrong, I might not always have listened, but I knew. He went with whatever whim I was going with. Soccer you say? Here's a spot on the team. (once, ONCE did I try and realized it was just like P.E and fuck that!) Stick horse-horse jumping you say? Ok, let me build you a course. And he sat through many, many of my riding lessons with a deep analysis of my developed abilities in the car ride home. He was that kind of dad. And a strong shoulder to cry on with big arms to hide in when the world just got a little too rough.

I remember one time, when a boy had broken my heart. I don't know if it was my loud sniffles or the even louder Lionel Richie album blasting through the house that tipped him off. But it can't always have been easy being a single dad with a 15yr daughter in the house. He knocked on my door, and I asked him in a very 15yr old way to go away.. He didn't, he knocked again.. And I thought, well if I scream even louder he'll obey me.. But he didn't. He didn't knock again, instead I heard a weird clinking noise. My curiosity got the better of me and I opened the door, eyes red from tears that he pretended not to notice. In his hands he held the biggest friggin bowl of ice cream I have ever seen..and a spoon. Handing it over he said;
"I thought you might like it.. Sometimes it helps a little.."
Ok, how cute was that?

Yeah, my parents might have made their fair share of mistakes..
But hey, I prefer that we don't count here, for my own sake.
They probably seem like pretty ordinary people to others, but they are extraordinary to me.
And tell me, aren't they just two extraordinarily beautiful people?

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To Kill a Child

Just wanted to share one of my favorite short stories.
It is horrific, and morbid and I find it slightly disturbing that I am so drawn to it.
Perhaps it is the truth in the morbidity that I find so disturbingly fascinating.
This story has been read by almost every Swede I believe, it is by no means a hipster-obscure dusty old tale I have found.
It is however, haunting;


Because life is constructed in such a merciless fashion, even one minute before a cheerful man kills a child he can still feel entirely at ease, and only one minute before a woman screams out in horror she can close her eyes and dream of the sea, and during the last minute of that child’s life his parents can sit in a kitchen waiting for sugar, talking casually about the child’s white teeth and the rowing trip they have planned, and that child himself can close a gate and begin to cross a road, holding in his right hand a few cubes of sugar wrapped up in white paper, and for the whole of that minute he can see nothing but a clear stream with big fish and a wide-bottomed boat with silent oars.

Afterward everything is too late. Afterward there is a blue car stopped sideways in the road, and a screaming woman takes her hand from her mouth, and it’s red with blood. Afterward a man opens a car door and tries to stand on his legs, even though he has a pit of horror within him. Afterward a few sugar cubes are strewn meaninglessly about in the blood and gravel, and a child lies motionless on its stomach, its face pressed heavily against the road. Afterward two pale people, who have not yet had their coffee, come running through a gate to see a sight in the road they will never forget. Because it’s not true that time heals all wounds. Time does not heal the wounds of a dead child, and it heals very poorly the pain of a mother who forgot to buy sugar and who sent her child across the road to borrow some. And it heals just as poorly the anguish of a once cheerful man who has killed a child.

Because life is constructed in such a merciless fashion, even one minute before a cheerful man kills a child
he can still feel entirely at ease..

That part has been etched in my mind since the age of twelve when I first came across this story.
How one can captivate such horror in such simplicity.. It is certainly a beautifully crafted sentence.

Read the full short story here.
Or click here for the original Swedish version.

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2 - My first love

How are you supposed to choose one?
What kind of first love does it imply?
I mean I was crushing hard on John Norum (guitarist of Europe) by the age of five, then I moved on to Bruce Boxleitner as Luke Macahan in How The West Was Won. Do they count?


What about dad? Like many other little girls I swore I'd marry him, it's true, I actually very vividly remember it.
I also, just as clearly, remember his answer to my proposal; "Sure honey, I'll remind you when you're older!"

Maybe Prince Carl-Philip? No.

What about little mr.D? The boy whose name I wrote in my diary all through elementary school? We never once held hands even. He broke my little crushing heart on several occasion, sometimes unknowingly, sometimes knowingly so. He was always nicer to me when I had ice cream though, the little whore. No, he doesn't count.

Maybe Marcus? My classmate and play-kiss buddy. (you know, the 10year old version of friends with benefits!) But we were so much on and off we make Ross and Rachel seem like a steady couple.

Hmm.. Maybe Tobias, my first real boyfriend? The first boy I ever introduced to my father? Then the most embarrassing thing happened in my life to that point. My dad shook his hand and introduced himself like a grown up. I wanted to die. I was like "Dude he's 15, not a 45yr old business man!" Come to think of it, that is probably one of the clearest memories I have of our time together, all the 6 weeks. Naturally I handled the situation as any rational person would. I ran and hid in a corner.

What about Erik, hmm.. The guy I stalked for a whole winter with song requests on the local radio? But that feels like more of a one-way kind of relationship.

No, fuck it. I'm gonna go ahead and say Milton. I loved that guy for years and years. I fell asleep with his picture in bed and I daydreamed about hugging him. Long past those days, when Milton finally fell into eternal sleep I actually cried.

Milton - my first love <3

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