I used to hoop, but now I hop.

For a while, drawing and making comics was this thing I did on my spare time, for my own entertainment. But last year it gradually became the main activity. And as I started putting more and more expectations and worries on it, I felt the need to find a new hobby to take the space where comics used to be.
 
I felt a huge need to get immersed in an activity that is different from what I do everyday, and that I'm motivated to learn but don't feel pressured to be good at it. It also has to be something that I'm not sharing with that many people. I must do it just for myself. 
That's why last summer I started hula hooping. 

(If Robyn hula hoops then it must be cool)

There's a huge hooping community on the internet, full of people posting tutorials that look either super impressive or super ridiculous. And I like activities that mix both things.

But now my new house is not as spacious and I stopped my hula hobby (at least until I'm brave enough to go practise in a public garden) and I'm getting super invested on my lindy hop classes.

 
I've been taking them since December. When you enter, you have to sign up either as leader or a follower. Leaders are usually men, and women are usually followers. The trouble is that there's a waiting list for followers. Whereas leaders are always welcomed, so I signed up as one.

Although I did some dancing before, I only took up partner dances very briefly, and rarely as a leader. And it's super fun! And interesting. Right now I see the whole thing as a problem of communication that we are constantly trying to solve. Like a moving puzzle. There are a few steps that we learn and can use to make a choreography out of it, but the interesting part is learning how to convey those movements to the other person. How to make her jump, or slide or stop without telling her out loud that she has to jump, slide or stop.
How to move my body in a way that the follower understands what's going on and where to go?

 
You can guess that most of the dance is controlled by the leader. And it's cool to have that power. But with great power comes great responsibility, and if the couple is out of tune, or trips and falls, or makes some mistake, it's probably the leader's fault.
Leaders make most of the mistakes.
I'm pressing on that because, the funny thing I've noticed, is that guys are usually the worst at taking criticism on their dancing.

I know I'm generalizing, and there are some super nice and humble leaders that I've danced with. But really, from my experience so far, having danced with both men and women in a number of occasions from classes to parties both here and back when I was in Vilnius, I can tell you that it's very common that whenever I tell men they are doing something wrong they get defensive about it, or at least feel the need to thoroughly explain why they did that mistake and how that happened because of something that was out of their control.
Whereas girls are always saying they are sorry, even when the mistake wasn't theirs!

I think that says a lot about our society and stuff, and I'll leave that for to you to think about. Meanwhile, I'm deepening my gender research and going out with my dancing shoes, because tonight's a swing night!

I hate dates.
Not the fruit,

Those are fine.
I mean when there's someone who's a possible love interest so you meet to talk and figure out if you have enough stuff in common and can stand each other's company for more than a hour and a half.
This all sounds like a plausible grown-up thing to do. And I can see why most people I know get excited about going on dates.

But I have a problem. If I fancy someone, the LAST thing I want do is to be completely alone with them.
Even talking while in a group is hard.
I will want to be near. But not ready to interact yet.
Like a love sloth.


I think I need a sort of progressive exposure for my charm to work. The amount of time we spend together has to gradually increase over, say, a month.
I made charts to compare it:

In my approach, on the first day we only see each other for 5 minutes (so there's very little I can say to hurt their first impression of me). Then day 2 is 15 minutes (the stakes are a bit higher, I may have to talk about the weather) and so it goes up and up, to a solid 2 hours time or maybe even more.

So far, most people I like liked were kind of in my friendship group zone... So I didn't really have to set a time and place to get to know them better. I wasn't lazy either: I did make a huge effort to be with them and went through amazing loops to get them invited for things without having them know I was the one inviting.

But, still, less pressure and it was never said out loud that we were going on dates. We were just doing things, together. sometimes. not even romantic things, necessarily. Unless you count washing a dog in a bathtub, or going to the supermarket as a romantic activity.

If that wasn't enough, I'm also very nervous to be on the other side of the situation and getting asked out. For all the above reasons and more:
Generally when someone invites me to go for a drink I say yes. I like meeting new people, and I like drinks. Both are great. But then, occasionally, I find myself in a dim lit place and wondering "where the hell are his friends?" and realizing I was the only one invited and this looks like romance.

This happened a few times when I was new in Vilnius, and therefore had no friends and had to go around meeting a lot of people in bars and film sessions and parties and night things because apparently that's how you make friends when you are not in school anymore. And making new friends outside school is really hard, and I was constantly worried I would be sending them the wrong vibe.


Maybe it's not just a coincidence that most people I ended up being friends with, in Lithuania, already had boyfriends or girlfriends.

So, I'm putting this two dilemmas on your competent hands, dear readers. I don't think I can or should avoid dates, but I would definitely love to have a magic card trick that would turn them less hmm "daty". Any ideas?

And, also, how to be friends with someone who's also single, and meet them, and have them know I really enjoy their company, without making it sound like it's something else? 

Gaaah, this is hard. I should probably just give up and stay home.

This starts with me having a bad day.
I live right next to my old faculty and will occasionally go to work there, although I don't know anyone there anymore.

I was having this lame day, and eating a ham and cheese sandwich in the school cafeteria and started crying.
You see, I've cried in schools before. Nothing new about that. But this time was so much sadder because I don't EVEN STUDY THERE! I'm just this random older person sitting in a school I don't go to, and tearing up WHILE EATING A SANDWICH!

Anyway, I go home and decide to heat up a frozen pizza to cheer myself up. (I realize now a pattern of eating ham and cheese things when sad) I was very hungry and bit the pizza right out of the oven.
This was of course a terrible idea and it burnt the roof of my mouth.

(This image goes to show that I'm not the only idiot in the world to whom this things happen)

My palate was all swollen and red afterwards.

The thing is, I had only bought 2 things in the store earlier.
One was the pizza, and the other was a big bag of oranges.
That was all the food I had.

I don't know if you ever tried eating citric fruits with a burned mouth but it stings a lot.
For the rest of the night I felt like I was in some sort of some sadistic experience:
"Let's leave a hungry person with an inflamed mouth in a house full of oranges and see what she does."


I ate one. Because I'm that tough.

 

The traditionally late New Year's Post

In case you're wondering about how I spent New Year's Eve (I know you probably aren't) I must admit I didn't celebrate it at all and just sat at home in my pyjamas. This is not a sad thing. I was very glad to be by the fire, alone, with comfy shoes and watching the first film of 2015. I always choose it carefully and this year, instead of a full lenght film, I watched the first episodes of Over the Garden Wall.





In spite of this very uneventful night, 2014 was a really busy year and full of great stuff. Looking back on my last year resolutions, I sort of got all I aimed for last January, to some degree: I did meet someone I cared about dearly, and I did move to Porto, and I did get a job. On the down side, most of this things have had some sad repercussion at some point, so it's not like I'm feeling glorious about any of it.



Nonetheless, I can share with you 5 things that happened this year and were new to me:



1- Good Food
My friends were all possessed by some sort of perfect-housewife's spirit and hosted the best dinner parties ever. We ate winter roasts, grilled chicken in the balcony, chocolate cakes, pies, codfish with cream... I can't even name it all.

Their dinners are seriously reaching a pro-level.




Me, on the other side, am still forgetting to buy napkins for my birthday party. And the toilet paper rolls ruined all the perfectly nice photos.



2- Parents

After a year away in Lithuania, barely seeing my family, and then 9 months living in Penafiel (my hometown) and seeing nothing BUT my parents, this year I'm finally slowly reaching a healthier arrangement of coming home very week. This is improving my sanity considerably.



3- Internet Sociability

This title is so lame. What I meant is, by the end of this year I realized I have at the very least 10 accounts in various websites where people can put a like on things that I publish. This is three times more accounts than I had a year ago.

I'm not really sure if that's good or bad. It just seemed unavoidable. But I started thinking lot about it, and being way more aware of what I publish online. Again, I'm not sure if that's good or bad. I guess time will tell.

4- Dragon-snake
Penafiel has a new public statue. 

I'm not even kidding you. This is real.

Smoke comes out of it twice a day, but I still haven't had the chance to witness that amazing miracle.


5- Boobs
Speaking of amazing miracles, I started taking the birth control pill and my boobs grew.

It was like an unexpected second round of puberty, and it made me very happy.
No one noticed it but me, though. 
 
 
To conclude, since I didn't celebrate New Year's Eve I decided not to make any resolutions either. I mean, all the ones from last year backfired anyway so who cares? who caaaares? 2015 will be the year of no expectations, no plans and not giving a fuck. In a way that's sort of a resolution in itself, isn't it?
 

The Ugliest Christmas Tree

 accompanied by a random poppy flowers painting-thing.

and this.

A lot happened in November.

First of all, I lost my job.
I didn't have a contract so technically they could just ditch me any time, with no explanations. Aaaand that's pretty much what happened.

No reason, no warning, no conversation. 
It was like being dumped with a message, but without the message.

This thaught me the valuable lesson that, in this economy, all employers suck and will treat like you are disposable. All of them. Even the ones that used to be nice and make small talk and offer you a beer. Even those.

Clearly, I still have a lot of anger inside and, according to my friends, have spent the last month emotionally exploding at the oddest occasions:

Got infuriated about some new sexist lottery campaign and almost cried in the streets,
 
 
screamed at other people's facebook status,

and discovered the concept of passive-agressive cleaning.


A few days ago I went back to pick up my things from the hostel. Kind of like in the movies when the person carries back a little carton box with framed photos and the plant they had sitting on the desk.
Except that all my belongings were a tower of empty tupperwares.

it says a lot about my priorities

And suddenly I'm back to having people ask me about what are my plans now ? (Nobody did that in the last few months because maybe they really thought being a low paid part-time receptionist was my life plan.)

Having to repeatedly explain why I'm not working anymore and how clueless I am about what to do next isn't exactly helping my grim mood. But, luckily, a few nice things came in the way this month to distract me from turning into a grumpy monster:

Started vintage jazz classes.
They do jazz hands. Not ironically.
I'm fairly tall and thin and vintage jazz is the sort of dance that always makes me look like a clumsy grasshopper, even when I'm doing the steps right. 

Which can be both awkward and liberating, depending on the day.



Went to TWO Autumn parties.
"Let's all celebrate the season and roast chestnuts in our tiny and weak student-apartment hovens!"

Gave a talk in my old faculty (while with a fever.)
In my defense, I didn't know I had a fever because it had been 8 years since I had been that sick. I just felt weird and thought it was nervousness. Immediately after the presentation (that went surprisingly well, by the way!) I fell ill and stayed in bed for 2 days watching nothing but crime series. all. day. long.

Started working on a french translation of my book.
The publisher sent me the translated text last week and it's really funny to read my own material in a new language. 

 

In spite of all that, I'm glad this month is over and I'm very ready for December's present-giving, mulled wine drinking, and blinking lights. This year I'll need a full shower of Christmas spirit. 

or at least this suit:

Baby, it's cold inside.

Let's say you're an erasmus who moved to Porto this semester. Or you're just living on your own for the first time and never experienced the reality of student apartments. Welcome. I made this guide for you, and it's a collection of all the knowledge that kept me warm kept me from freezing this last 6 years.

ADVISE FOR SURVIVING WINTER IN PORTO.

Fix your room.
Porto's housing prices are pretty low compared to other cities in Europe. You probably got excited about renting a huge room for only 200 euros per month, right? 
You were very happy about having large wide windows, and so much space you could fit a whole mariachi band in there.

But now winter started and you discovered bigger rooms are colder rooms.
Don't worry, there are still a few things you can do to make both your room and your house better:

    - Buy rugs. They are magical.
    

    - Check if wind is entering through the windows and doors. It probably is, in that case buy some of those sand-snake thingies (I don't know the name, they look like this.). There was a time I just rolled some teatowels and put them along my window frame and it worked too.

    - Close the blinds at night.
    If you are foreign there's a big chance you never used those ugly blinds almost every house in Portugal has:

They are there for a reason. Usually windows are not very thick and they don't close so well. The blinds will protect you from the sun and heat in the summer and the cold in the winter.
 
Get a heater. 
Here are the choices:
Oil heater: it heats up slower but it's less energy consuming.

Space heaters:

They warm up a room much faster, but consume much more energy. Unlike oil heaters, this ones consume the oxygen in the room. So there's a risk of monoxide poisoning if you're not careful.

If you can't afford a heater, let this english sailorman teach you how to build your own with nothing but a bread tin, ceramic flower pots and Ikea candles:



Alternative/complementary heating devices:
Electric bed cover - They stopped selling this in a lot of countires, but not in Portugal! Just remember to turn it off before going to sleep, because they may lead to some fire hazards.

If you don't trust yourself with a bed cover maybe just stick to a hot water bottle.

a classic

and, if you are a super clumsy human being and always end up spilling boiling water when trying to refill them, there are microwaveable heating bags made of lavander and seeds that are safer and smell good. If you're crafty, you can make one yourself: Fillings can include rice, wheat, millet seeds, flax seeds, beans...

Let me introduce you to polar fleece 
Maybe you never had winter pyjamas. Maybe you never even bought pyjamas, at all. 
Well, in Porto you'll need them.

"What do you mean You sleep in your underwear?"

Nowadays you can buy bed sheets AND pyjamas made of polar fleece. That's the warmest combination invented my man. Also, polar fleece maintains the heat, so if you have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night you'll come back to a really warm bed!
There's only one downside to it: it's too effective. 
When I first bought polar fleece sheets my bed was so warm and confortable it got much harder to get out of bed in the morning, and I missed classes more often.

Exercise
I never really did this. 

But I lived with a girl who would go to her room and exercise with a pilates ball when she was cold. And it worked. 
I'm more in the lazy side of the spectrum and rather just wear more clothes and eat hot stuff, but her technique is probably the healthiest and you may want to consider it.

United we'll make it
Call your friends. Get together in one room (preferably the kitchen) cook something in the oven. Celebrate the winter, hug and be hugged because this is the best weather for that!