water through a chive

the weekend and all its possibilities for improving life or the laundry pile and just mustering the energy to get up and get done all those amorphous ideas.  my ambitions today had something to do with food and putting up as much of it as possible.  some early fall (it was cool temperatures today here) throwback to when we used to garden or the fact that until 12:30 today (after the groceries rolled in (in the burley)) we still had very little food in the house.  

william was at a friend's house all day today and while greg and henry walked to the grocery store to get all the things on our list, i made two batches of pesto.  that's where energy levels and ambitions collide and... well... just barely don't cancel each other out.  

henry at lunch... he didn't want pepper slices. better to go at it like a cob of corn.  

later though, i made some really sugary good peanut butter popcorn concoction and wisely gave half of it away.  and henry and greg picked a colander's worth of cherries and we pitted them, froze two jar's worth and dried two cookie sheet's worth (which equals one jar's worth) and cooked down the juice into four tablespoon's worth of bittersweet syrupy stuff.

it's all there behind henry, who's drinking water through a chive.

well, your ambitions for this day stretch far beyond this blog, so i'll end with this little video.  happy weekending!  

cherry trees and toads

william went off to sfo today, which is the after-school program also run full-time in the summer.  it's his last day before starting school on monday so it was his last chance to get back into the swing of things, danish- and school-wise, before danish school begins.  his brother, meanwhile, stays home with me for another week before heading back to preschool.  he's not too keen on this idea.  he's been missing his classmates and his teachers all summer long, but it's the way it's worked out.  but i emailed his teacher to find out if we could come for a visit and she said, 'of course', so i called this morning and over we went.  

but first, he painted... 

then we picked a jar's worth of cherries to take over to his school to give as a gift.  and at some point after we got there, i found myself standing under a cherry tree... ah well...

when he got in, one of his three main teachers was there and gave him lots of hugs and told him how happy she was to see him.  he started wiping his eyes to, i think, hold back tears.  it was really sweet to be reminded of what a good class it is for him.  he played outside, one of his other teachers came back from a field trip with some of the bigger kids and so he went through another round of hugs, then she told me he could stay and eat lunch with them and so i went and got some much needed groceries in the meantime.  later, we made pesto, and even later, we ate it while william told us of his day at sfo and a play date he had afterwards with one of his good friends.  they caught (10, if you ask greg) 25 frogs (and toads) and 1 salamander and he said he pet one toad for so long that it would hop up to him and walk from one of his shoulders to the next.  now, it's 8:55 and i'm nearly positive at least one of our boys is asleep.  so we're making progress.

thor's day

there was no way i was getting the boys back to the grocery store today, but we managed to get along for breakfast and lunch with what little store we've built up in a couple of small trips since we've been back.  late in the day when i was trying to figure out dinner, i walked over to the little farm store while the boys were jumping on the trampoline, but a sign on the door told me it had been closed since early july for the summer holidays and it won't open back up until saturday.  i guess i shouldn't really call it a farm store, because a month in the summer would be a silly time for a farm store to close up shop.  it's just a tiny grocery store in an old farm building run by a co-housing neighborhood.  food comes in from everywhere.  so i walked back and used eight of our ten eggs and most of our potatoes and made a sloppy version of a spanish omelette, which requires a total of 5 ingredients, and that's counting the salt and oil.  and i lamented that none of our greens really made it while we were gone.  the swiss chard did succeed in growing to immense proportions and going to seed, but that's success on its terms, not ours, and today i cut it down.

as for the boys, they played.  inside for much of the morning (well... what was left of it after a 10 a.m.! wakeup) but later out in a fort in the woods and then a trip down the bike path to the stream...

there's a boy in this picture somewhere

the dam that william built

it's 9:30.  greg's up reading with the boys and as far as i know, not a one of them is asleep yet.  still, we're trying.

wednesday that was never going to be tuesday

if i thought our first full day back at home would be low-key, easy going, it wasn't entirely meant to be.  one of our suitcases is missing in space with not a word to be heard from the airport about it and inside that suitcase is our calendar.  i've known that at some point soon after returning i'd be going in for my third shot of zoladex but figured, 'eh.  i'll get the calendar back soon, and then i'll pay attention to the date of that appointment.'  fortunately i put the appointment card in rather plain sight (i think it popped out at me when i opened the silverware drawer last night) and saw that the appointment was scheduled for today at 11:15.  this meant greg worked from home on the first morning of his day back and my bike got a quick dusting off, complete with quick tune up.  it meant sitting in the special waiting/treatment room #14 of the oncology department wondering what the older woman across from me was wondering about me as she looked on with nothing else to do while getting an iv of something or other.  nothing special here.  just another day of forced early menopause to try to prevent something worse.  just a little post-treatment treatment.  i nearly took the bus to this appointment because just the thought of needing to go to the oncology wing of the hospital for anything having to do with my health is enough to make me feel slightly emotionally laid up, and somehow taking the bus would be my way of suggesting that this unpleasant experience just go ahead and get the better of me.  and that seemed a little silly.  i've biked my way to worse things than this after all.

later, the boys and i had a really pleasant walk (well, i did the walking, they did the sitting in the burley) to the grocery store.  on the way back i dug out my camera (i.e. phone) to catch a little of the beauty that surrounds us on sunshiney days like today, and as soon as i went to hit 'click' it died on me, so no pictures for now.

then the boys and i biked over to the house of some friends (kid friends and adult friends) and had a nice time sitting/playing outside in the backyard.  henry rode william's old bike "winther" and really loved it.  it's bigger than his old bike, coco plus, so it could mean much less burley time once preschool starts back up again, as i think it's much easier for him to ride.  he threw his legs out to the side on every downhill, and i, of course, rode behind him holding my breath.

then dinner.  then a game of bananagrams.  then william struggling for the second night to fall asleep.  it's 12:23 right now and i haven't heard a peep out of him in at least 5 minutes, so there's a chance he's fallen asleep at least two hours earlier than he did last night.  if he can keep that up, he'll be back on schedule in a couple of days for the start of school on monday.  i'm not sure i'm going to hold my breath for that one though.

vi kommer tilbage

doesn't it feel strange when you walk into your house after a long absence?  almost like walking onto a set recreated to look like your home.  because you can't remember every detail so something mundane's bound to surprise you.  "huh, so that's what the woodgrain on the floor looked like..."  that sort of thing... 

but when you're william and henry walking into your home after nearly three months, you only have eyes for those toys that have been sitting nicely on the shelf uncared for in your absence... 

so yes, we're home, and blogging has resumed as suddenly as the u.s. had put a stop to it.  at least i hope so.  maybe i can wade through all those pictures of our summer someday soon.  at least that's my plan.  right now it's 5:33 p.m. wherever we last changed the time on this computer, which means it's 12:33 in the morning here.  the house was, of course, closed up when we got here and it was warm, too warm, so all the windows got opened.  it's a land mostly without mosquitos (at least when you compare it to the muggy mosquito haven of the midwest) but it's also a land without screens, so while we don't have mosquitos in the house i have practically every other type of bug buzzing and flying around me as i type this.  both the late hour and the bugs are telling me it's time to turn off the lights and go to sleep, but there are also two very awake time-confused boys upstairs right now and i have a feeling they're not going to be falling asleep anytime soon.  

we have some super sweet neighbors who were watching our house (i.e. flushing our toilet) and checking our mail for us while we were gone and when we got home we found they'd graced a shelf of our fridge with food and a large bowl with apples.  such a very, very nice surprise.  

here are the boys snacking on some of the treats... they were so excited to be eating "danskmad"... danish food again... rye bread, liver paté, summer sausage, that henry put the sausage on top of the paté, which very possibly no danish person has ever considered.  

and now i hear him upstairs, "you go down first william."

... hmm... mischief abounds. time to post.

up, up, and away!

we seem to have done it.  

in denmark this morning... 

 waiting for the train...

waiting for the other train...

in canada in the afternoon...

and now (without any pictures to show for it), in boston.

tomorrow i can write more about our journey.  but for now, it's definitely bedtime!

10 stuffed animals and two feet of track

do you see the sparkly floors and general clean house behind greg and henry?  that's what greg and i spent the entire day doing. it got a little undone when the kids got home, but then we (verbally) locked them out of the house (banished to the trampoline) and got it clean again.  

after showers, the boys finished packing their bags.  henry brought home from school a suitcase with a stuffed animal in it and a journal to write down all his adventures in.  he promptly decided to fill the remaining space in the suitcase with all his stuffed animals from his room, along with a few random train track pieces.  so that's what he's taking to the u.s.: 10 stuffed animals and two feet of track.

william was more thoughtful, as a seven-year-old would be: toys, candy, two workbooks from school, his pencil case, and an empty wallet, because, as he said, he plans to make money while he's in the u.s.

and they both got new headphones for the trip and reading lights (you see greg putting in the batteries).  there's a "dollar" store here, called 'tiger'.  it's actually coming to new york city soon and they're billing it as a home goods store.  i don't know if i'd go that far, but it is cute and things are cheap and while i'm not so into accumulating lots of cheapy things for the sake of taking advantage of a good deal, it felt like a fine thing to do to pick up a couple pairs of $10 headphones for a long plane journey (and, fingers crossed, they'll last beyond the first leg and that the boys will take care of them).

it's nearly ten and we still have odds and ends on our packing and to-do list that have yet to be crossed off.  and i'm also hoping to fit in a little yoga as my hip is sore from too many days of not stretching (a very clear side-effect of my new-ish treatment change) and i don't want to sit for hours on end without at least trying to do something about it.  so i'll end here.  hopefully a little jet lag doesn't stop me from posting again soon.  see you across the atlantic!