a little sweden

we took the boys to the dentist today.

the bad news: henry is on the verge of about a hundred cavities.

the good news: greg stayed at a beautiful inn when he was in sweden, and he took pictures for us!




do you see the sign?  anno 1699. as an inn, we wonder?  or maybe that's when the trees were built.  anyway, they say people like linnaeus stayed here-- he was 1700's.  but they also say queen kristina stayed here.  she lived between 1626 and 1689, so maybe the trees were built in 1699, but it's possible the inn has been around even longer.  i knew nothing about queen kristina, but in my brief research for this post i thought i'd share just a little about her.  a queen of sweden, she was born to king gustav and maria eleanora.  here is what oregon state had to say:

Her mother was disappointed that she was a girl, especially since the court soothsayers and wise women predicted the child would be a boy. Consequently, she had little or nothing to do with the child. Her father, however, said "She will be a clever girl. She has already deceived all of us." Some reports claim that Kristina accompanied her father on journeys even as an infant and showed delight at the sound of cannon fire.

later, it's legally recognized that she will succeed the king when he dies and he sends her off to be trained as a prince.  these scandinavian countries were always so forward thinking.  unfortunately the king dies in battle.  his wife, her mom, apparently locks herself up in her room with his heart in a gold box.  kristina becomes queen.  she becomes educated.  she's super smart, learning german, french, italian, spanish, and latin.  oy!  but she also studies 12 hours a day.  (like a lawyer.)  (but not like me.) of course, danish is notably missing from this list... so maybe it really is a difficult language to learn.  no, danish and swedish are quite similar-- i verified that this morning, reading the back of the shampoo bottle-- so probably she didn't need to 'learn' it.  in any event, she's crowned in 1644 (4 years before christian IV dies-- remember him??).  this is right around the time that sweden invaded denmark and denmark handed over a bunch of norway and a little bit of denmark to sweden.  what else?  she is 'the driving force' in ending the 30 years' war, is blamed for descartes' death, considers abdicating from the throne, has a nervous breakdown, does abdicate, crowns her cousin, leaves sweden on a tour for europe, becomes a catholic, tries to become queen in naples which the pope doesn't like, has one of her servants killed, tries to rule poland, which she's not allowed to do, writes a couple of books, and lives and dies in rome.  and a lot more in between.  now-- i got that from oregon state.  you're not going to write your history paper from my blog anyway, but if any of it is inaccurate, just pretend i'm writing fiction.

more pictures....

up the hill and to the right--

 outside the inn...

apparently there's not really trespassing in sweden.  you can walk anywhere and build a fire and set up your tent anywhere, as long as you're 300 meters from a house.  and, of course, you do it all at your own risk.

it'd be a beautiful place to camp...

 inside the inn...

a lovely inn.

but it's late and now we are done with the guided tour, so i will say goodnight.

oatmeal

i have not been a very good danish student lately.

it's possible that i've not been a very good danish student since starting this whole gig.

studying danish is always the easiest, or most logical thing somehow, to push off to the end of the to-do list.  most days after i've dropped the guys at school, i have to go to the super best and procure all of the items we've run out of or are in fear of running out of.  items so small, like 1 liter of milk, that you feel like you are always running to the SB for more of it.  and then there is the getting home and unloading it.  and running down to put one load of laundry in the washing machine so you can get it in the dryer before you have a quick, little monkey and his fairly independent older brother to keep out of danger, which does not include going up and down the cement stairs to the basement of the building.  and picking up, making the beds, getting the dishes out of the way, and folding the pile of laundry on the couch. because it's much nicer, nay essential, to study in an uncluttered environment.  and then wait... a little smackeral of something, because you can't study on an empty stomach.  and might as well relax if you're going to enjoy this little mid-morning snack. maybe with a cup of coffee.  a good time to catch up on emails and blogs and the most popular of time-sucks, facebook, which lead to one tangent after another, until that is no longer fun, and i am finally ready to start in on my homework, except that i really should go down and switch the laundry... and on and on, so that today, i decided i needed to break out of that now-familiar pattern.

we both dropped the guys off and rode together to risø, where i did not learn how to log onto the internet, so that i would have a three-hour stretch, free of distraction, devoted to nothing but learning danish.  which i mostly adhered to.  i had to call my living-my-dreams-in-denmark coach and then the lawyer i'd written to over a week ago, but had not heard from, to follow up.  yes, he was still interested.  just been working 12 - 14 hour days, that was all.  as i've known, the work-life balance, ubiquitous in denmark, doesn't apply to lawyers.  sad. scary.  it's like we're a profession working ourselves over cliffs in every country we inhabit... which is every country.

and all we do is talk, and write.  that's it.

well, i have a meeting with this either exhausted or inexhaustible attorney on friday.

after that was over i finally turned to my homework, and only occasionally turned my head upward to ponder the clouds.

pondering...

working.


pondering...

working.  but too many clouds eventually make the air give up what warmth there was and i go inside for the last half hour of my studies, until lunch, and then class, where my teachers inform me that the language school is waiting to find an appropriate class for me.  or, they are waiting for more students so they can split one large class into two, or something like that.  in any event, i should just remind them every now and then for a status update.  which is fine by me.  i'm having just enough luck, ambition, time, what have you, keeping up with two classes a week.  and my mandatory twice weekly ride up vestre kirkevej is the type of exercise i would not be volunteering for myself, if we're being honest.

so, accelerated classes are on hold.  volunteer work for the busy lawyer is moving forward.  and i kept my head above danish waters today with approximately three good hours spent not looking at piles of unfolded laundry or super best aisles, and mostly not at clouds either.


henry...

pondering the oatmeal on his nose.

constitution day

thinking about buying a really nice camera.

thinking about ada, ohio, and i'm a kid.

thinking of all the cinnamon bread i just ate. and the coffee i'm drinking.

thinking of traveling around the world... and if it's possible to sleep on beaches and buses with two kids.

thinking, but not worrying, about the mess right now.

thinking of what book i will read next.

still thinking about that camera.

thinking that constitution day feels like sunday morning.

thinking about searching for our next place to live.

thinking about the recall election.

thinking about traverse city, michigan, and i'm an adult.

thinking i hear henry waking up from his nap, and that it's time to end this post.

june 17, 1994... or thereabouts

june 4th... i put the children in their winter coats to take them to school this morning.  i don't know what the temperature was.  it felt cold.  maybe because i was sick, but i woke up feeling alright and in need of no tylenol, had no fever.  so i don't think it was any sort of self-preservation thing.  i think it really was just cold enough this morning that they were more comfortable in their winter coats than they would have been out of them.

getting them there and riding back in that cold, felt like pushing it enough.  plus henry got us up early.  before six anyway.  so i decided not to go to danish class today.  i went back home and got into bed, under the covers.  my nose stayed cold for a long time and i thought about how william had complained this morning, when he was still in his pajamas, that he was cold.  will i really have to turn a radiator back on?  on june 4th?

i woke up feeling worse than when i'd lain down.  i took some ibuprofen, warmed up some lunch, ate, took a shower, and folded laundry until the achiness went away, and then went to pick up the guys.
then we had a good afternoon playing around the house.

...trying to listen to the radio about the recall election i will not be able to vote in, over all of the toy noise.  i hear a little news blurb about the nba playoffs. and for some reason, nba playoffs are tied in my mind to being 15 years old, going with my mom one summer afternoon to drive my little sister to a french-class weekend camp in wisconsin.  we lived in illinois at the time.  stopping on the way home to eat dinner at some restaurant attached to a gas station.  arriving home before the sun had fully set, to a muggy evening... and probably hoping to catch the bulls in some playoff game.  or maybe not.  i look back because for some reason the o.j. simpson freeway chase is also tied to that memory, and i find that the bulls were already out of the playoffs by that night in 1994... which i see now is the day before i turned 15.  but maybe i have three separate memories rolled into one, because i also remember being able to drive during part of that trip, but i wouldn't have had my permit yet.

ah memories.  you think you remember and then you check the facts.  i guess what's most poignant to me now is the mugginess.  here, at 9:45, the sun is in roughly the same position as it was when we pulled back into the driveway that evening (whatever evening it was), but the air was humid.  the heat stayed on even as the sun went down.  it was june.  it was summery, if not yet technically summer.  and today, in denmark, it is june and i put my kids in their winter coats to take them to school.  i am missing those muggy midwest evenings.  i have a feeling i will miss them all summer, which will technically begin later this month, even if it is not summery here, the way i know summery to feel.

last week, someone at greg's lab asked greg's boss if he'd "enjoyed his summer."  it was relayed to me as a joke, but then greg says that everyone is saying that this, and not those other days, the days when i hemmed and hawed and finally took my summer clothing out of storage, is what the rest of summer will be like.  and i'm okay with it until i hear a little news blurb about the nba playoffs and i'm reminded about the feel of some june evening eighteen years ago and suddenly it doesn't feel like it's enough to have nearly endless sun, and trees with all of their green leaves, and blooming poppies, when you have to wear mittens and winter coats to enjoy them.

i really want to feel a little warmth, a little mugginess, on a summer evening in the midwest.  who knows.  maybe things will surprise us here.  it's only spring after all.  too soon to be reflecting on this year's summer, even if it was only a joke.

may 31, 2007

flæskesteg... a brief introduction

sick today, though much improved over yesterday, which i spent almost entirely in bed.  an hour to get henry to sleep.  an hour for william.  no overlap.  greg is maybe a third of the way through sweden by now... which is where he will stop, and then return tomorrow.  our neighbors here are as good as our neighbors in madison, and so i feel sufficiently looked after and cared for that it feels okay to be alone, sick in denmark, with two kids to look after.

before greg left he put a flæskesteg (fles-keh-sty... approximately) into the oven, which i think could become quite a popular dish in the u.s. if they'd make those cuts of meat over there... i don't think they do, but i'm no expert on things you'd find at the butcher shop.  basically a pork roast with the rind.  rub salt onto the rind and bake it in the oven... then under the broiler (thank you to my neighbor sarah for pointing out this crucial step) so the rind gets really crisp.  we ate it with asparagus and potatoes, and it's usually served with red cabbage... pickled, generally, i think... and we had some in the fridge to accompany tonight's meal, but i forgot, so it will go with tomorrow's leftovers.

flæskesteg...

the kids played ball in the house before dinner and had a stuffed animal fight after dinner.  then the bedtime fun.  but now they're asleep, and i should be too.  hoping for a restful and healing sleep.

goodnight!

neighbors... 4,000 miles away

thank you phyllis.  he loved seeing his matchbox cars and backhoe loader again.  

we loved your thoughtfulness.

seven

yesterday, i suggested to greg, who is over on his work hours and going on a short work trip soon, that perhaps, if he were able, he leave work early today so we could go to lunch for our upcoming anniversary.  he said, yes, he would like that very much...

and then suggested that, "just a thought-- it would be pretty cheap if we ate in my work cafeteria."

silence. for just a moment.  will he realize the error of his ways, or will i point it out to him?

i love greg-- maybe because he doesn't possess all of that hallmark romance that results in an overconsumption of fanny may and dead flowers and jewelry i'm not going to wear.  but his unconventional suggestion of celebrating one's anniversary in a workplace cafeteria because it's cheap is almost going too far in the other direction.  wouldn't you agree?

so instead we went here...

and ate our lunch outside (which, admittedly, we could have done at the cafeteria too)...

sweet husband

and around the corner, had dessert at a coffee shop, with cappuccinos... an unofficial anniversary tradition, dating back to year one...

sweet dessert

the wife

but, it's seven years (on monday)! my favorite number!  i tell you about his slip-up... so i can tell you seven other things about greg to clear up his rap sheet--

reasons why i like him so much...

you know, we first met at a party in college.  i had one of those, "oh man, the cutest guy in the world just walked through the door, i think i will marry him" moments that start out some relationships.  but then, through the course of our conversation he told me he was majoring in physics and minoring in math and chemistry and my heart sank.  i thought, "oh man... he's b.s.'ing me.  he thinks we'll never see each other again and so he's thought up three of the most difficult subjects to impress me so that i think he's really smart."  (because in a david sedaris manner i would often imagine i was majoring in subjects like physics and math, just to pretend i was really smart. who is nerdier? the spouse actually majoring in those subjects or the one pretending to?) well, of course we did see each other after that party and he wasn't just trying to impress me-- he really was a science geek!  but pretty light on the geekiness.  i couldn't believe my luck.  i didn't even know the person throwing the party.  neither did he.  we could have easily not have met.  but we did.  and he continued to be brainyish.  he finished a ph.d. and two masters before turning 30.  i only say this because he would not ever say it or think to say it or think to be impressed by it, but i am continually in awe of his accomplishments and they are what brought us here, so i also feel incredibly grateful for the brain inside his head.


he's also good at ultimate frisbee and running long distances and pulling our kids up steep hills with the burley.


he can play the cello-- to some extent.  and the guitar-- to a lesser extent.


he can make a good dinner really fast.  much faster than me.  and bake.

he doesn't like to follow recipes... i guess my feelings are sort of neutral on this point.

he likes to read books.

he wants to help and he's ethical and likes cats and dogs.

our children love him a lot.  if there's a good cop parent and a bad cop parent, he is definitely the good cop parent.  he does not do the lower-your-voice, puff-out-your-chest, intimidating dad thing, which i appreciate, and our kids do not even know to appreciate.  he will walk henry around and sing him 'i've been working on the railroad' 20 times in a row and he's told william every 'star wars' story he can think of and is now making them up to satisfy w's unceasing appetite for all things 'dar vader and emperator.'

he's modest and will probably be embarrassed by this post.  that's eight (if you don't count the bit about the recipes).  one for next year.