I was challenged by/got an award from Carina to name 7 things you might not know about me. Thank you Carina! And if you’re wondering who this person could be just follow the link above or find her name in my blogroll. She is a childhood friend of mine who’s now married and has her own house and two beautiful daughters. AND she is currently building the sweetest doll house I’ve ever seen. So envious. I’d like to have some kids just so that it wouldn’t look so vierd when I want to play with toys.

Kun tämän palkinnon saat
Kiitä sitä jolta sait tunnustuksen
Kerro seitsemän asiaa itsestäsi, mitä muut eivät vielä tiedä
Anna tunnustus seitsemälle
Linkitä nämä blogissasi
Kerro näille seitsemälle tunnustuksesta

Seitsemän asiaa itsestäni:
1. I have a pattern phobia. I get really nauseated whenever I see certain patterns, for example the seed house of a sunflower when it’s getting a bit old. 2. The movie that I’ve watched the most times is Charlies Angels. I just love it, despite the sexism.

3. I collect icons, but you probably knew that already. I’m just telling you so that if you go on a trip to one of the Mediterranean countries you could remember to bring one back for me I currently own six.

4. I never failed an exam when I was at Helsinki University. AND I wrote all of them (except maybe one) on the set date. (I figured this would be the perfect time to brag…)

5. This year, I ordered a take out pizza for the first time in my life.

6. I’m still afraid of needles, after being a diabetic for five years! But I’m only afraid if they’re longer than 5mm and someone else is pushing them into my arm.

7. I tend to read at least two foreign fashion/interior design magazines a month. In a year I’ve probably read five times the amount of magazines compared to books…

I hereby reward/challenge:

• Lena
• Ulrika
• Janne
• Jeannette
• Hanna D
• And just anyone who’d like to join in

*The best yoghurt in Finland – Kalinka top, by Ingman. Totally artificial. When other yoghurt brag about containing real berries, this one only contains some kind of froth. But it tastes great!

*After living without mascara for two weeks due to a stubborn eye infection I now have great lashes

*Other things that make you feel like you’re good-looking, for example when a guy starts talking to you in the street, just like that, for no reason what so ever.

*My new blood glucose monitor. It looks like a tiny porsche, and it has wireless connection. What more can you ask for?!

*When Oliver sings Monty Python’s “Every sperm is sacred” at work.

*Finding a place for the things you love. I’ve now got two icons standing in the shelf above my stove, and my beloved indians of course!

Facts about diabetes #1:

My mood swings are to 80% dependant on my sugar levels. If I wake up in the morning with values over 8, as I did today, I feel like total shit. The day is crap and I just want to go back to sleep. If, however, I would wake up with normal levels, say between 4 and 6, I feel really happy, energetic and see the new day in a very different light.

Well this did not happen today and so we come to “facts about diabetes #2″:

Peanuts have the slowest carbohydrates of all foods! It might be that they contain so much fat that my intestine have a hard time digesting them. It is equal to eating a large salad, followed by a huge steak and then, after this carbohydrate-free intake, consume a large piece of chocolate cake. It can then take hours before the cake gets absorbed. Same thing with nuts. So even though I check my values in the evening and they are fine – I can have values as high as ten when I wake up in the morning. Thereby causing me to have a hard time getting out of bed… Lousy nuts

Since I started exercising more regularly I’ve been having some troubles with my sugar levels. I tend to take too much insulin in the evening with the result that I wake up in the middle of the night with levels around 3. Tonight was no exception, and I had the urge to say:

- Honey, isn’t it your turn to get up and feed him!

Unfortunately there is no “honey”, and even if there was, Iam the one who needs feeding. So I just have to drag myself out of bed and drink some juice… Gah, and only two hours before I really have to get up!

But being a diabetic is really an eye-opener when you exercise. After just one hour of interval-body training I can take half of the amount of insulin that I usually take. Consider that next time you find it hard to drag yourself to the gym!

I have been proved healthy. First my dentist didn’t find any holes in my teeth (this even though another dentist had confirmed that I had a hole in one of my wisdom teeth… public health care, need I say more) and then my doctor told me that I was fit as a fiddle. The only thing she complained about was my dry feet.

She did however tell me that my Calcium levels were a bit lower than they should be. I asked her what I should do about it. With a very “nothing to worry about” kind of voice she just told me to eat Calcium tablets containing vitamin D. And then I found this:

Significant vitamin D deficiency in youth with type 1 diabetes mellitus.

J Pediatr. 2009 Jan;154(1):132-4.

Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D was measured in 128 youth with type 1 diabetes mellitus. Less than 25% of the patients were vitamin D sufficient. Because individuals with type 1 diabetes mellitus possess multiple risk factors for skeletal fragility, ensuring vitamin D sufficiency throughout childhood and adolescence in this population seems especially warranted.

Wow, the Internet can really turn you into a hypochondriac!

A couple of weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night with low blood sugar. I can never sleep when my blood sugar goes below 4 and since it takes a while for the ”cure”, in this case fruit juice, to kick in I always have some time to lie awake and think before going back to sleep. This is very convenient as you always have the best ideas in the middle of the night. This time I came up with the idea of having a crazy food-party.

The rules were as follows: You have to bring some kind of eatable goods that you either find totally strange or that you just always wanted to know the taste of. Or it could of course be something that everyone else thought was strange but that you yourself eat all the time.

And at least I thought it was fantastic when people stormed my place with things like pomelo, joddlare sausage and salted plums. Some things were a bit difficult to eat, like the coconut. Fortunately I was well endowed and with the help of hammer, screwdriver and a knife they soon had the nut cracked. And then was the case of the fish stomach that I was absolutely sure was some kind of chips – you know like dried meat that you can eat straight out of the package. Turned out you had to boil it before eating! Well no-one got sick, probably because it was so disgusting that you didn’t want to eat that much of it! Other not so favoured foods were the jalapeno- and jerk popcorn – way too spicy!

It’s at moments like these you really come to appreciate how polite Japanese people are. Shinya’s response to the fish stomach was that it was “not so disgusting” and when asked how he liked the liquorice-smoothie he just replied “I think I have to have lived in Finland for a longer time to really appreciate it”.

But it was actually true what Birka said; Everyone DO like a liquorice smoothie (at least if you’re a Fin that is). Here is the recipe for 4 servings:

• 1/2 liter vanilla ice-cream
• 4dl milk
• 1dl liquorice sauce
• 1tbsp lemon juice

You just mix it all in the food processor until it has the suitable smoothieness.

Thanks to all of you who came and subjected yourselfs to my crazy ideas!

A couple of posts ago I tried to explain the size of a horse liver by comparing it to two human heads, and as you can see from the picture below, a human bladder should be as big as one head.

This is a jar that I got from my local health-care center. (I’m having my annual doctor’s appointment next week so they have to run some tests to see if I’m keeping my sugar levels and organs ok) It’s for collecting my nightly urine. No, not a weeks worth of pee but just the one time you go to the toilet after waking up in the morning. It can contain 3 liters…