Claire is an absolute expert when it comes to a lot of things. She's especially good at things like surviving arctic temperatures without a coat, falling asleep in the middle of sentences, suggesting inappropriate solutions to the most innocent problems, thinking of different foods so loudly that it can be heard and interpreted in other countries, and most things that involves her left hand instead of her right. On top of all this she can understand a whole bunch of Swedish.

This last talent will be ignored for the purpose of this blog post.

To simply turn life upside down completely I have decided to blog in English during my stay in Sweden this Christmas and New Years, in crisp contrast to the posts in Swedish, written and posted while in England. The key to any Christmas break is... well in our family; the sims (2 or 3) and milkshakes and the next vital ingredient is confusion. That and stress and anxiety.

After severe snow related delays in London I landed in Vasteras (yeah thought I'd fly there this time, mix it up a bit, who knows might fly to Lysekil or Oresund or something next time) late Friday evening. I had lovely company as I bumped into someone I went to school with when I was younger at the gate at Stansted and we were equally unimpressed/apathetic through the entire ordeal. Once we'd arrived with promises of facebook chats later on we parted and reunited with out families. His brother was driving him back to Mariefred and to my shock horror my brother was apparently driving me back too! The snow "chaos" in London is absolutely nothing compared to the weather we have here (obviously) and I was not too impressed - until we actually hit the roads. I'm now convinced my little brother was made to drive (he's pretty useless at everything else so congratulations Adde, we finally found your niche!) and might demand him to become by personal chauffeur.

On a side note we also have a new car. Mum got bored of the old one. Again.

Christmas eve now and people all over and blogging about traditions (all of them better and more lovely than the other) and how they "always" do it. I suppose there are things we do too in my family, but as I'm sitting here I can't really think of a single thing we seem to do the same year after year anymore - except for Donald Duck at 3, like every other sane Swedish person on Christmas eve. Other than that we always change things. I don't think mum's ever stayed long enough in the same house for us to ever be able to have the tree in the same place two years in a row since I turned 9 or 10 and the decorations change too. Mum gets bored easily and constantly rearranges, changes.

I have always considered myself to be a very constant person. I am infamous for my moods and the 3 years I spent known as the girl that was constantly happy, were the 3 most miserable years of my life. I remember with such a pain in my heart smiling my way in and out of everything. Every single day for 3 years and on the inside I ended up with 1095 days worth of misery and insecurity bottled up and saved. I was still constant though. Constantly afraid, constantly worried, constantly beaming, constantly confidently charging straight at absolutely anything if it meant I wouldn't have to answer questions. Though I'm in a different place today, and I have people around me that I know don't mind me having different moods I know I'm still a constant. I fall into a sense of safety, a way to do things and I stay there for as long as I possibly can. Despite this I don't seem to have ever been able to grasp and hold on to a set way of doing Christmas. Possibly because it's never been made into a big deal at our house. Christmas as such has, of course, but not the tradition. Not the "the way it's always been" thing.

Constant or not I can look back to this day last year, the year before... the year before that... and I know I'm facing something completely different this Christmas.

Silent night.