toto, we're not in kansas anymore

during my usual sunday morning troll of the internet, i watched this wonderful TED talk by pico iyer on the subject of home:

as one who is by choice displaced, i often ponder what home means. quite often here on this very blog. i think that instead of getting easier to answer, the longer you are gone from home (your original home, the place of your birth), the more muddied the waters become. you begin to feel that place isn't home and this place, where you live and make your life and even find a lot of happiness, sometimes even on a daily basis, definitely isn't home either. and it leaves you all with what i like to call my mid-atlantic feeling (as in cast adrift in the middle of the atlantic, neither here nor there). and it is, as always, a lonely feeling, tho' it can also leave you feeling utterly unique and who doesn't, especially in their moments of private solipsism, want to feel unique, even if it unique in your own particular brand of lonely.

and so i struggle with notions of home. and making a home. and feeling at home. and maybe it's a normal state if 220 million of us are living outside the country of our birth, as iyer suggests. so maybe i should just lighten up and go with it. because this makes me sound like i'm unhappy and i'm far from that. i just don't really know if i know what home is in this age when so much is in flux. it's where you keep your important books, i thought at one time, but when our books now fit on an iPad, then home is wherever i find myself (provided i have my iPad with me) by that definition.

i suppose, as iyer says, i somehow do manage to stitch together a sense of home (and thus identity), from the various pieces i carry around inside me...where i was raised, where i live now, all of the places i have traveled, all of the experiences i've had, all of the memories i've created. i carry it all within me, no matter where i am. and my actual house is filled with things gathered on those travels...trinkets, statues, glassware, rugs, scarves, so it reflects that sense of home that i attempt to construct, almost unconsciously. and what is a home? a nest, a place to feel safe. a place to call your own. a place to house your important books. and i can't complain because i do have that, even if i couldn't have imagined how it would look and what it would be like, had you asked me to do that 20 years ago.

and so i muddle along, like so many others, constructing a life, a home, a family and filling it with deeds and memories.

on travel and home and the passive aggressive nature of facebook

this morning, i read what suzanne (eggdipdip) wrote about home and going back and how the reality of your life is never as you imagined it would be. and i also read this charming little new yorker piece on guests, family and growing older by david sedaris. even before reading these i was pondering questions of family, home, visits, travels and belonging. 

last week, i got all bent out of shape at my sister, who hadn't shared any pictures, or more importantly, any stories, from the rest of their trip (they went on to london and paris after leaving denmark), except for a couple of iPhone photos sent from the road. for all i knew, she was still combing paris for some raspberry pastries that she had vowed to eat all of before returning home. i'd asked her a couple of times on facebook when she was going to start sharing her photos and got some smarty pants answer about how she was going old school and going to have them printed this time. 

the more time that went by with no sharing of stories and experiences and photographic evidence, the more pissy i became. and then it all exploded last week after she nagged me (on facebook) about not handling molly's kittens too much. and facebook, being the passive aggressive central station that it is, escalated things, until we were both mad at each other. and she was issuing "apologies" where in she said she was sorry that i was mad, not that she was sorry she hadn't shared any photos or stories. which is different than apologizing. and possibly could be classified as not apologizing at all.  ahh, sisters, they know better than anyone else how to wind you up. 

but the bottom line was, that i was feeling left out of the rest of the trip and at first it made me sad and then it made me mad. the timing wasn't right for us to tag along to london and omaha beach and paris, so when they left us after their visit, we had to live vicariously through their travels. and if the ones you're living vicariously through don't share what's happening, what you experience is far from vicarious enjoyment. 

then of course, she got home and life intervened and she didn't get the photos downloaded and sorted from various cameras and iDevices and soon several weeks had gone by. but you can never really know what it's like inside of someone else's home life, so if you're far away and not aware of how loan closings and baseball games and trips to the emergency room intervened, you just sit in your own home environment, which is calm and quite uneventful and wait. and grow impatient and a little bit pissy. 

which i guess brings me to what this all got me thinking about...that having visitors upsets the natural rhythms of home in ways that are both good and bad (tho' i will say that my family's visit wasn't long enough to have moved on to the bad part, tho' we could have done without the constant references to the 1990 miss south dakota pageant). a visit pushes you out of your usual routines - you look around you with a different set of eyes - suddenly noticing all of those signs with the word "fart" on them again and being reminded that that's hilarious. you end up filled with expectations, both voiced and unvoiced. and when it all goes back to the routine, you feel a little disrupted and restless. and it takes awhile to find your footing again.

it's the same for the one traveling, there's a re-entry period, where they jump back into life at home and maybe find there's not time to download all of those photos and look through to select the ones to share.   and meanwhile, you sit impatiently waiting to live vicariously through the rest of their travels, to let them transport you as well for a few moments, outside the confines of home. 

at home in my body

my "to blog" list grows, but alas, time has not expanded and it leaves me feeling a bit diffuse and out-of-focus. i always suffer when i'm not writing. but while not writing, my mind has been occupied. occupied by questions of home, being present in my body and dreams of making a podcast.

last weekend, in connection with an amazing art project that i'm participating in with our local art group, trapholt museum in kolding and trekantsområde, a danish artist and a syrian artist, we had an amazing discussion of what home means. it's a question i increasingly ponder these days, as the country of my birth displays distressing signs of madness on the political front. denmark isn't that much better, but they did just regain their status as world's happiest. this, despite rabid right wing xenophobes at the helm. but it all leaves me feeling, once again, a lack of a place that feels like home. at least identity-wise. and maybe i'm also feeling split since my work week is spent away from the house i call home. but that seems to be serving to make our actual house feel more like home base. the place from which i go into the world, stretch my wings (and my muscles at yoga class these days), and soar. i'm loving work and the fun things i get to do there - photoshoots, video shoots, chasing a lorry through the scottish highlands, casting, arranging, planning fun projects. so the split isn't a sad one. and maybe the conclusion is that i now have multiple homes - i feel at home at work and at home, in copenhagen and in the countryside, with husband on the weekend and on my own during the week. maybe we're multifaceted and we have many homes. perhaps the constant is me and thanks to my newfound yoga practice, i am finding home right here within myself, in my own body. and i honestly can't remember when the last time i felt that was, if i ever did.

that fact hit me the other day, as i stretched into minute 5 of a yoga pose, my inner thigh muscles screaming for every bit of my attention. i couldn't remember the last time i really listened to my body in that way. was attuned to it. that it had my full attention. that i was just there, in it, and nowhere else. i really don't know if i've ever been fully in my body in that way before. ever. in nearly five decades. we live so much in our heads these days, it's hard to be fully present in our bodies. but, now, after the major wakeup call of acute and sudden back problems, i'm working on it. and yoga is definitely helping. with regular practice, maybe i'll be able to call my own body home.

of murakami, reality, home and possibilities

"it's no wonder you like to read books about reality, since you live so far from it." -- monica, starbucks, copenhagen airport, 10.09.08

my sister meant it better than it sounds. we had discussed murakami in the car all the way to the airport. i had said that what i like about murakami was his exploration of reality or rather realities. she said that likes how the language makes you trust those jobless, 30-something male characters. i was on my way to oslo, she on her way to chicago. they were calling me by name overhead, but i still had to get a grande latte.

what she was getting at was the crazy reality of our life at the moment. we've just (almost) finished getting our house the way we want it and now we're considering moving. not just down the street, but to another country. and at the moment, we don't really know which country. will it be norway or singapore? they sound diametrically opposed, but what they have in common is shipping. both are big locations for shipping. and i'm in shipping. and husband is considering getting into shipping as well. and there are exciting opportunities in both places. for both of us.

but it's all up in the air right now. theoretical. the stuff of pure possibility at the moment. and the subject of much conversation and speculation and scheming and imagining. how to make it work. scheming ways of having it all. it's hard to imagine parting with our house at the moment (i will definitely be taking that red smeg, no matter what, even if i have to sail it to singapore). but, could we afford to keep our house and buy another home? (that depends on the offers really and those are also theoretical--strong possibilities, but not definite yet.) norway is really, really expensive and if i think that, in comparison to denmark, it must be super, hyper expensive, because denmark is pretty expensive. if we had a house in denmark and an apartment in singapore, is that really realistic? how often will we get back and use the house in denmark?

in other words, where will life take us?

and this, combined with our home improvements, have had me thinking about home and what it means. and i'm not the only one, tangobaby wrote about home recently as did hele at truth cycles. it must be something in the air.

what is home, really? is it a place? a house? an apartment? fabulous red appliances? or is it a life lived together with those you love most? can anywhere be home, as long as those you love are there? could an artificial disneyland of a place like singapore really be home? or will it be the mountains of norway? or will we stay in the house that we have spent so much time and labor (not to mention money) getting exactly as we like it? which reality will we choose?

or is it really that we love dreaming towards some new possibility? that looking forward towards the next big thing is what we do, it's what makes us us. it's where we feel most at home, dreaming and scheming and looking at the next fork in the road and choosing which path to take. so perhaps that's my answer...we take our home with us, wherever we go. maybe it's not a place at all, but is within us. a reality that we make every day, as we live it and breathe in the possibilities.

i have to say i like that idea. and i'm looking forward to seeing how this all pans out as the picture gets clearer in the coming weeks.

* * *

and with jon stewart's daily show playing in the background, recapping last week's convention farce, i become painfully aware that my musings and considerations are luxury problems indeed.

2021 :: a second plague year, in pictures

january

it started off ok. a quiet new year's with friends, some baking - homemade sausage rolls, cardamon buns, quite a lot of working from home. we were able to hold a couple of croquis sundays before everything shut down in earnest. we bought a greenhouse on the blå avis and spent a saturday dismantling it and carting it home. and our child turned 20 halfway across the world! so we gave her valentino sneakers in neon pink. as one does.

february

working from home meant my coworkers were mostly lounging around on the bed or staring out the windows. i was jealous of them. we had actual snow and enough cold temperatures so that the lake actually froze and though we oddly didn't skate, we spent a whole weekend down there, enjoying being on the ice, grilling sausages and loving that there was some actual winter. a week later, temperatures were mild, so we dug the foundation for the new greenhouse. i started a 100 days of payne's grey project, but quickly fell behind and abandoned it in a kind of malaise brought on by the monotony of working from home with shitty internet.

march

i bought a bright pink sweater and some ceramics from a local artist to cheer myself up. there were signs of spring. working from home continued and it was nice to live in the countryside to alleviate feeling so confined. making good food and baking were definitely things i chose to do to cope. we finally put the windows in upstairs on the front of the house. i bought an unusual color palette in linen for making a quilt. and check out how badly husband needed a haircut - we fervently hoped for the hairdressers to open again soon!

april

a white papa kitty, who was surprisingly friendly, showed up, signaling the advent of spring in earnest. we found a second greenhouse for only 500kr and moved it home on a trailer via the back roads, rather than totally taking it apart. a lot of april went to working on the greenhouses. i'm not sure i ever got dressed in proper clothes - i may have spent the entire month in sweatpants and a hoodie.

may

things tentatively began to open up and we were able to go back to the office a couple of days a week. i realized that i preferred working at home because the coffee here is much better than the swill that passes for coffee at work. the greenhouses were completed and we planted a few things. weaving at the museum started up again as well, which was very welcome. i attended an embroidery course at the museum in kolding. we hung our spring exhibition, but didn't hold an opening, as larger gatherings still weren't allowed. billy, the prodigal cat, made his annual return (he definitely has another family somewhere) for the summer. the swans built a nest at our end of the lake, but alas, i don't think they ever hatched out any babies. 

june

summer days came - we had a department outing on a colleague's boat, which was on the most perfect sunny day. flowers bloomed, the garden took off and we had our annual sankt hans bonfire. husband ran a 4:18:4 mini triathlon and seems to have been bit by the triathlon bug. i prepared the warp for my crazy striped tea towels and husband worked on the siding on the west side of the house. 

july

i finished the rainbow quilt i had made in early 2020, just in time to give it as a gift to friend's daughter who was graduating. we enjoyed the garden bounty that was the reward of all that hard work on the greenhouses in the spring. i made a second quilt, using the funky linen color palette - planning it as a picnic quilt for my work in the exhibition. we spent all the time we could enjoying the garden. i only took a week off, saving my holiday for a hoped-for november trip to the us.

august

life was essentially back to normal. we were in the office again full time, though we all took days working from home here and there because we had grown accustomed to it. the garden continued to give generously, both veggies and flowers. husband decided to extend the house a couple more meters since he had a new plan for where the stairs should be. an old bloggy friend came to town and explored copenhagen in the rain. husband's eldest ran the copenhagen ironman, which was an absolutely amazing feat of which i am still in awe. i finished the quilt and at our exhibition opening (which was really the closing), i set up a picnic, complete with snacks and cocktails that everyone attending could sample. it was a good month and didn't at all seem like it was in the midst of a plague year.

september

i resolved to grab all the chances i could for creativity, starting with a lovely weekend down in højer with my creative group. it was absolute bliss and i even got a pair of green sandgren sandals in a little shop run by a lovely woman who i believe made up prices for each customer individually. i made an artwork of a focaccia with all kinds of goodness from the garden to take along for sharing and we made quite a lot of linoleum prints while we were there. then, a few days later, i went to fanø for a very enjoyable day with my weaving group. then, our team had a much-needed trip to copenhagen together and went a long ways towards repairing the damage wrought by too many months of working from home and a boss who had gone down with stress. the coffee continued to be much better at home and the garden generously provided flowers for all the vases in the house.

october

i attended a gourmet knitting day where i met some lovely and talented knitters and thoroughly enjoyed the company of women. we saw the latest james bond in a posh theatre with reclining seats - the first film we'd seen in the theatre in several years. a hard frost came and stopped my dahlias in their tracks. i brought the mango plant inside, along with all the avocados that i'd been growing as well. my first sweet potato crop was a bit tiny, but it was fun to try growing them. i'm not sure our climate is warm enough for them. i finished four tea of my crazy striped linen tea towels, in time to take them as gifts to the us. just before we left, i found two kittens i didn't know about in the greenhouse. they were absolutely adorable and we quickly found a new home for them.

november

finally, that longed-for vacation came and we headed for arizona and some sunshine and warmer temperatures. it was a great trip! we went to a sorority gala, the asu-usc football game, we climbed south mountain and we saw the grand canyon and visited sedona. it was so much fun seeing husband see the grand canyon for the first time. back at home, we went to husband's aunt's 90th birthday and i played with shibori in the dye pot twice! once with real indigo. i decided to take a new job in the new year and we put in the windows on the other end of the house. it was yuzu time and i got all that i could and made loads of delicious things with their fragrant goodness.

december

december started with the discovery of a charming little gin bar at halmtorvet and two visits to jah izakaya with colleagues. i find the food there so inspiring and delicious! we did a small belated thanksgiving gathering. husband made me a christmas calendar, giving me a new holey stone every day - he had collected them last summer as he spread stones from a big bag we had ordered in front of the house. when he was doing it, i asked him if he had found any with holes and he laughed at me. but he was secretly saving them to do the christmas calendar. he's a keeper. mid-month, the child came home and that was wonderful. we've been making her favorite foods and taking care of all the things she needed to do - like going to the doctor and getting a pfizer booster to go with her johnson & johnson vaccination. we had a wonderful white christmas with snow on the ground and the most sparkling, beautiful frosty walk. we should have celebrated husband's eldest's 30th birthday on new year's eve, but she got covid and we all had to isolate until we could test negative (we have all tested negative multiple times now). it wasn't the end to the year we expected, but maybe it was fitting anyway. 

* * *

i wasn't going to do a full month-by-month mosaic post, but i found myself perusing the ones from previous years and decided that it's nice to have them to look back upon. so, as always, this one's for me. and what's nice is that as i looked back over the photos and wrote the words here, i realized it may have been a second plague year, but it wasn't really all that bad. 

2020 :: a plague year, in pictures

january 2020

it all started off just fine, didn't it? a nice 70s themed evening with friends to welcome in the new year (i did this mosaic backwards, but didn't want to start over, so start in the bottom righthand corner), a resolution to do a creative act of some sort every day (i did that, but only because i count writing and cooking as creative acts) and of course, cats.

february 2020

experiments in baking, more creativity, some vintage finds and of course, cats. the pantry filled up with water because it never stopped raining, not even for one day. i went to louisiana museum of modern art with a friend, not knowing that wouldn't be possible again for much of the year. 

march 2020

despite reports about the virus, we still met sabin in barcelona and had a lovely week there with her. i came home and immediately started a new job the next day, and the day after that, they sent us home to work from home for the next few months. i kept up the creativity, cooked and hung out with the cats.

april 2020

spring came, despite the pandemic, nature just began to grow and burst forth, marching on. there was a lesson in that. we cooked a lot at home and even had a few chances to eat outdoors. seeking comfort, i began a rereading marathon of the mrs. pollifax books. and as always, i enjoyed times with the cats.

may 2020

still working from home, but the weather improved and we started to be able to go to the office at least part of the time. that was really nice. i discovered an app called too good to go, where local grocery stores and bakeries and even restaurants sell a "magic bag" for a song and you save food from being wasted. i plan most meals around these bags now.

june 2020

the strawberries began and i made loads of cordial from them and from the elderflowers. there was actual sunshine and i spent time in the garden - with the cats, of course. and i bought handmade items from individual artists. and i stitched up some masks for myself. there was no mask mandate in denmark, but i was headed for the states, where there would be.

july 2020

i went to arizona to help sabin move out of her apartment and into the dorm. we had quite some adventures and her car broke down while i was there and couldn't be repaired, so she had to get a new one. got a new small bee tattoo while i was there and we spent evenings cooling off in the pool. it was so nice to be together with her. and traveling in the pandemic meant my flights were pretty empty.

august 2020

home again to a new car - my first new car ever! a citröen cactus, which is a little baby SUV. we embarked on our big roof project and so i did a lot of cooking and the weather was beautiful, so we ate outdoors. the light meant that husband could work long days. he had help for a week and they got a lot done, but not everything.

september 2020

more berries, more cordial. i regularly bought myself flowers at a pick-yourself field nearby. the roof project continued and we got the actual roof on. weaving began again and i started on my latest runner for the kitchen. there was still a lot of cooking and baking.

october 2020

corona anxiety started coming into the picture again. numbers were rising. a good friend's kids both got it - being the first people who i know in real life who had the virus. i made great progress on my rug and we were back in the office regularly, though still not 100% of the time. i voted and sent it to chicago via DHL to be sure it was there in time. 

november 2020

the darkness settled in, and we began working from home once again. but sabin came home and we did two small gatherings for thanksgiving since it wasn't possible to gather in larger groups. it was so nice to have her here, but she was a little depressed by the darkness and the constant drizzle. i put up christmas lights on the house for the first time, both to combat the darkness and because we would be home for christmas this year. 

december 2020

a corona scare, frustrations with the isolation and not being able to see friends, and wearing masks and constantly being tested. but we made it through. we ate a lot of good food, i made yet another turkey and we did see family for christmas. sabin went back to arizona for the new year and arrived safely. i bought a sequined dress that i wore for both christmas and new year's, because we all need a little sparkle in this plague year. 

* * *

this was a bit of a belated review of 2020. i'm once again grateful to my daily photo habit, which hasn't let up since i began it in may 2008 when i got my first "real" camera. these days, i often take the photo with my phone, but since it's an iPhone 12 pro max, it's got a pretty good camera in it. having all those photos really helps me stroll through the events of the year, but it also took some time to get them uploaded and made into mosaics. it doesn't really look all that great so far, but here's hoping 2021 will be better. fingers crossed it will improve when biden takes the oath of office.

unspoken rules

we've worked at home a lot over the past two and a half years. it's been both good and bad. we're mostly back in the office these days, but i do still work some days at home when i really have to concentrate. or because my back is hurting, which it has been lately. i'm having flashbacks to the back surgery in 2015 and hoping to avoid it happening again. though working at home probably contributes to it, as i tend to sit much more when i'm home - forgetting to take breaks or eat lunch. 

but it can also be weird being back in the office. a whole new set of rules came about while we worked at home. and many are unspoken and just understood. or not understood. and it's weird, since they're unspoken, to feel disappointed or annoyed when the rules are broken, but the fact remains that i find myself feeling disappointed and annoyed of late.

a couple of examples: 

1) calling on teams: when you call someone on teams, you send a message first to ask them if they have time. so it's super annoying and jarring when when someone just calls out of the blue. often when you're in the middle of a meeting, so they don't even pay attention to the little red bubble that shows that you're busy. 

2) meetings in an open office environment: during corona, we all sat at home and could therefore hold meetings out loud and not bother anyone but the cat. back in the office, it's an open environment and there are some phone booths for meetings where you're the only one, or there are plenty of meeting rooms if you're several people meeting with others on teams. however, i've noticed that some of my colleagues continue to hold their teams meetings in the open environment. they put on headphones and don't realize that they're shouting. one colleague actually had a meeting on teams with the person sitting directly across from him. hello? go to a meeting room, or just go around to the other side and talk to one another! by the end of the day, i was utterly exhausted from listening to his shouting during all his meetings and i was too mad to say anything about it. but seriously, has two years of working from home rendered him so unaware of other humans that he doesn't realize he's being utterly rude to his colleagues?

how is company culture formed? who decides the etiquette? and how does everyone agree on it without talking about it out loud? and when someone utterly violates it, how do you talk to that person about it nicely? i know for sure that you don't let yourself steam about it all day and get so angry that you know you won't be able to be nice about it. but then the moment passes and maybe now his way of just holding meetings with headphones and shouting has moved everyone towards establishing a different company culture than the one you thought was there. and it's all unspoken. and it makes being back in the office less fun than it should be, because it truly is nice to be around your colleagues again.

but i still think a combination will be best. i need a couple of days of being able to concentrate at home and a few days of being with my colleagues in the office. they're two completely different ways of working. and i like the variety, but i do just wish we all agreed on the culture.

horse people are crazy

oh the joys of crazy horse people...

at the end of june, we found a buyer for matilde the wonder horse, as sabin has outgrown her and it was time for her to go to another family. the people seemed very nice and thus we agreed to an arrangement where they got to take matilde home for one week to try her out, whereafter they would make a first payment on her and then the second payment august 1. they wanted to see if she would get along with their other horses and if they liked her, which was ok with us if it meant finding the right home for her.

after one week, they had had shoes put on her and had nothing but gushing praise for her. she fit them like a glove, got along with their other two horses and was just their very dream of a pony. we were happy and they were happy. we truly thought we'd found a great home for her and that's what we had most hoped for. then, the time for the second payment rolled around and lo and behold there were suddenly a whole lot of very insurmountable problems with her hooves. we've always had shoes on her, but took them off last december when we brought her home and weren't going to be riding her. her hooves have a tendency to flake off around the edges, so she's a horse that rather needs shoes on. but there's not really anything wrong with them per se and she's never been lame. they needed work when they took her home and we recognized that, so i reduced the price by the cost of one shoeing.

now, i'm being bombarded with texts filled with ridiculous lengthy statements on how there are long-term problems with her hooves and one has a big bump on the side and how it will be months and months and perhaps never be able to be fixed. funny how the farrier she had there during that trial week never mentioned any of that when he put the shoes on her.

turns out they're using a vet that we know from sad experience is a real piece of work. misleading people into having unneeded x-rays and diagnosing dire problems that require loads and loads of veterinary visits on horses that don't actually have a problem. all for their own gain, because they know that horse people are gullible are completely batshit crazy will do anything for their animals. she also tried to tell me that matilde so badly needed her teeth floated that it cost extra (she had had it done by this vet), despite the fact that she'd had her teeth floated by a trustworthy vet less than a year ago and there was simply no way it could have been as bad as they told her.

luckily, at the beginning, before they took her home, we both signed a written contract which states that we know of no problems with the horse (which is the truth), but that there is no guarantee, as she is 15 and a living animal. so they will have to cough up the rest of the money or we will go get her. i really don't want to do that, as we'll just have to start this process all over again and chances are the next person will have just as much of a crazy horse person brain.

i'm still hopeful we'll work it out and that we can be happy that matilde found a good home (because it genuinely did seem like a good home). i just think it really sucks when a dishonest vet intervenes and causes trouble.

the pros and cons of working (mostly) at home

my wonderful new job is in norway. i live in denmark. so, i've made an arrangement whereby i work most of the time from home and only "commute" to oslo to spend a few days every other week (tho' that's fast becoming every week). thanks to the miracles of modern technology (secureID, smart phones, VPN connections and the ubiquity of broadband), this works pretty well.

the pros of working at home:

1. no one interrupts me
2. i have time to make sabin's lunch "pakse" in the morning
3. i get to drop off sabin at school every morning, right before school starts, instead of an hour before like we used to
4. i can wear pajamas most of the day
5. i don't have that panicked feeling on sunday evening if the laundry isn't done
6. i'm home when the mailman comes to deliver packages
7. i can play the same 4 songs 600 times in a row if i want to and no one complains
8. time and peace to think and to concentrate
9. i can pick up sabin mid-afternoon so she doesn't have too long a day
10. i get to make dinner on a daily basis
11. i enjoy being by myself
12. i have created a lovely, pleasant, inspiring space upstairs in which to work
13. i'm never far from my juicer
14. since i am a night owl, i can work into the wee hours and not have to worry about getting up and getting ready for work in the morning
15. i can drink 2 giant pots of fragrant, hot chai all by myself and not have to share
16. small time-outs during which i (perhaps a tad obsessively) carve erasers into stamps

cons to working at home:

1. no one interrupts me
2. wearing pajamas all day is a bit embarrassing when the mailman comes to the door at 1 p.m.
3. i actually sit and work for too long without a break because there are no interruptions
4. if there's IT trouble, there's no IT guy to call (thus i have to just tell myself to restart the computer and see if that helps)
5. if i have something i need to discuss, i either have to wait til i go to norway or call someone (and i hate calling people, except for a very few "phone friends" that i can while away hours talking to on the phone)
6. no one to bounce ideas off of
7. i pounce on husband when he comes home, telling him all of the things i've been thinking of all day (this can be a bit annoying for him)
8. distractions (like those erasers just sitting there, waiting to be carved into stamps)
9. the smart phone is ugly, ugly, ugly
10. not enough interaction with other adult people

but, largely, it feels luxurious and very nearly decadent to have a great job and be able to work most of the time at home, thereby getting much more time with my family. and that the job involves traveling is great too, so when i'm not home, i'm going somewhere fun--like oslo or singapore or manila or marseille. so, i can't really complain. and looking at the list above, there are more pros than cons.

on working and motherhood

one reads constantly in the newspaper and in magazines, in books and of course all over the blogosphere about mothers stressed out from trying to have it all. there seems to be a whole movement of educated moms who are opting out of the workforce to stay at home with their kids. these übermoms seem to look down on those moms who choose to remain on a career track, just as working women once looked down on stay-at-home moms. it seems that position has shifted, at least in North America, if not quite yet here in Denmark (where the cost of living reality mandates a 2-income household). i've heard some whispers of it coming from the other side of the sound in Sweden and the article from atlantic monthly that i linked above actually does reference Sweden.

simply the whole need people seem to have (especially on scrapbooking blogs) to declare what kind of mom they are with a series of letters WHOSM, MOUWSH, MWHDOH or whatever they are, is but a symptom of it (*magpie, please please don't take offense, i'm not targeting you here, it's everywhere on the 'net). what is really wrong with being a mom and having a fulfilling career? why has it come to a point where we feel we should apologize for that?

my daughter is 7 and i have felt, even since the very beginning, where she was born 10 weeks early and we lost her twin sister when i became gravely ill with the first case of listeriosis in denmark in 25 years, that i would be so much more for her as a mother if i devoted some of my brain to work on a regular basis.

for 3 and a half years, i had a rather high-powered and stressful job. and by stress i mean real stress, not whiney newspaper, oh-goodness-call-my-coach-because-i-can't-figure-out-how-to- live-my-life stress. like having way too many tasks and not enough resources (people-wise or time-wise) to do them all kind of stress. like not having time to pee during the day kind of stress. but, i really loved so many things about the job. especially that i traveled a good 150 days last year. all over the world.  

through it all, i wasn't a perfect mom, but my daughter, who grew from a 4-year-old to an amazing, smart and strong 7-year-old, thrived. i took her with me when i could (she got to go to manila four times and singapore once in three years), a result of which she is a total hotel snob. she was accustomed to my being away, as she hadn't ever really known any different (in my previous job, i was in the US at least one week a month). 

yes, i bought my way back into our home after each trip, bringing her something from each location--an olympic pencil case from beijing, some little beaded animals from cape town, a gap sweatshirt from london or tokyo, a totally cool lunchbox from busan. trying to teach her along the way that having something unique that not everyone else has (arguably this isn't true of gap sweatshirts, but since there's no gap in DK, it is here) is something to be valued. and teaching her that travel is to be valued.

the hard part of my previous job wasn't the travel, it was when i was in the office. it was mandated that one had to be there 8:30-5. this meant that with my hour-long train ride each way, i could never be the one to pick her up and i was rarely the one making dinner. many days i didn't get home in time to eat dinner with her and my husband. i was usually home by bedtime, so i could read to her, but it admittedly wasn't enough time together.

it made us feel like we couldn't waste our weekends and that was stressful. i would feel a bit panicked if all that laundry wasn't done on sunday evening, not really knowing how to face the week without it in order. but, for the most part, it all hung together and the happy moments far outweighed the unhappy ones.

now, i'm in the luxurious position of having a great job that i love, traveling (less than before, but still enough for me to feel happy), being able to work mostly at home, so that i am here to hear about sabin's day and pick her up after school and make dinner together with her (got my new stove installed this week!). so, it is possible to "have it all," but sometimes you have to put in the hard work for a time to put yourself in a position for it--to gain a reputation that will allow you the luxury of being able to design such a solution.

the hard work i put in on the career front also enabled me to raise a confident little girl who fearlessly got on a transatlantic flight by herself 3 weeks ago and will get on one again to come home this sunday. so we both benefitted from my pursuit of a career. would she be as worldly had i been a stay-at-home mom? no way. might she read a little better and speak english with less of a danish accent? probably. but that will come and she's by no means behind. am i better for her during the time we spend together because i have time away from her? without a doubt! do i feel guilty about the choices i've made? not even a little bit.

we all make choices in the way we live our lives and you just have to be at peace with the ones you've made. i fear there are an awful lot of people out there who aren't and are spending an awful lot of time justifying to themselves and others and condemning others' choices to feel better about their own.  oh well, wouldn't it be boring if we were all exactly the same?

i really recommend you read the atlantic article if you're interested in thinking more about this subject.

comfort baking and other effects of the coronavirus

these are very strange times. companies asking everyone to work at home, restaurants and bars closed, public gatherings limited, libraries and other "non-essential" public services closed as well, at least here in denmark. i laughed when i first heard the term "social distancing" last week, thinking that the danes had perfected that long ago, so it would be nothing new around here. but it's not really the time for ironic laughter. the fact is, we owe it to those in our society who are immune compromised or in a high risk category in relation to the virus because of their age, to stay home and not risk exposing them the virus, should we be walking around with it, not knowing we even have it because we are asymptomatic.

just a few weeks ago, i was thinking that life had to go on more or less normally because living in fear is no way to live. so we went to barcelona as planned months ago, to meet up with the child and have a holiday together. i think if we'd known then what we know now, we would have canceled the trip. that said, i'm very glad to have had the time together. i'm glad to have seen the salvador dali museum in figueres, la sagrada familia, park güell and other gaudi buildings around barcelona, the maritime museum and the picasso museum. i'm glad to have found a super cute local bar, cuba de janiero,  that became our nightly hangout. i'm glad we ate ramen twice and tried the patatas bravas in every tapas place we went to and discovered the coolest healthy breakfast place and explored all those thrift shops. i guess if i had it to do over again, i'd still go. i wouldn't trade that time with husband and sabin for anything. it fits my lifelong ethos of "what are you gonna remember?"

none of us seems to be getting sick, so perhaps we were even lucky (knock on wood). spain too is on lockdown now, with curfews and closed restaurants and bars. i don't think barcelona is hit that hard as of yet, it's madrid and the canary islands that are fighting the battle, so perhaps we just chose the right destination. but denmark's borders are more or less closed now too, so we are lucky we got home as well.

and in the middle of all of this, i started a new job. late last week, when i started, there were no restrictions and social distancing had just been coined as a phrase, so i went to the office as planned. we had a team breakfast so i could meet everyone and i got a bouquet of flowers, which is always the tradition in denmark. and then, on friday, the word came down that we should work at home from monday and for the foreseeable future. that was a little bit weird, to have been in the company for two days and not even have everyone's names straight and have to be on my own at home.

so, i began this post this morning, before my working-at-home day started, and now, i'm writing at the end of it. it absolutely flew by, filled with countless online meetings via skype and teams. i definitely did not have to worry that i wouldn't be included or have anything to do. i have been cast into the middle of a very exciting, business-critical project that's been put in motion due to the effect the coronavirus is having on trade. what a great way to jump into things with both feet and and not waste any time. i'm finding it very energizing and it's very encouraging to see how very skilled my new colleagues are at their jobs. i'm impressed and feel very much that i have landed in the right place, even though i'm not actually able to go there right now.

i've read that the coronavirus is having a big affect on CO2 levels and pollution in china and in italy, where things have been brought to a standstill. and i can see firsthand the affect its having on ways of doing business. i wonder if it's going to make us rethink the way we do all kinds of things? and i wonder if those new habits will stay with us - will we travel less? will we cook more at home? will we keep stockpiling toilet paper? will the danes continue to hoard yeast? will we continue to engage in comfort baking? so many questions. not the least of which is, how long is this going to go on?

* * *

tough times call for historical fiction, like daniel kehlmann's tyll. 

no idea what a christian is anymore 🧐

this is one of those, i have to write about this in order to figure out what i think about it posts. we've had, for us, quite a lot of snow this week. today, it was sunny, clear and cold and very windy. the wind caused quite a lot of drifting across various roads in our area. i didn't walk far enough to actually show you how bad it is, so this picture doesn't actually do it justice. i decided to take another way around to get into town to get groceries and i got thoroughly stuck in a snowdrift. i oddly neglected to take a photo of my predicament. i called husband, who wasn't anywhere near home, to tell him what happened. he laughed, told me to go home and get a shovel and come back and start digging. i was definitely NOT wearing the right clothes for that task, but i was about a kilometer from home, so i walked back home to change clothes and get a shovel. 

in the meantime, i asked husband if he could call the farmer who rents our field, to ask him if he could come with a tractor and pull me out. he could. i said i'd run home to change into proper winter clothing (thank goodness sabin got two pairs of moonboots on vinted for christmas) and i'd meet him back at the car. 

i bundled up, found a little shovel, just in case, and headed back. as i was walking back, i noticed that our new neighbors were standing out by the road by their driveway. they are actually fellow americans and they are here in denmark as missionaries (apparently the danes are godless heathens, despite the fact that we have a state religion here and virtually everyone is lutheran). 

when they first moved in back in october, husband and i took a couple of my many avocado plants over and welcomed them to the neighborhood. they didn't even really invite us in that day and we stood awkwardly in the entryway, talking to the wife and her mother who was here from nebraska, helping them move. while we talked, a couple of the sons (they have 3 and 1 daughter) also said hello. but we haven't met the husband or the daughter or the eldest son. it all seemed a little weird.

even weirder, when they looked up and saw me headed their direction, they went further into their property, seemingly to avoid talking to me. i'd think a bundled up woman in a blizzard, carrying a shovel, might warrant a, "hey, do you need help?" but i don't even think i would have gotten a hello without my saying hello first. it was weird, to say the least. 

i wouldn't have actually taken them up on help, as i knew help was on the way, but honestly, i think it would have just been neighborly politeness to offer. i find it absurd that they are in denmark to "church plant" (according to one website i found) and they don't even display the slightest hint of christian kindness. what kind of christianity are they here to spread? i am honestly perplexed and a little offended.

yes, we have painted viking symbols on our house. but they don't even know us and haven't talked to us. what kind of attitude is it to see me coming and move further in to avoid even greeting me, especially in weather conditions like today's? what kind of christianity is that? i don't know if they're trumpy, but this makes me suspect they are. but christianty aside, i honestly would have expected more polite kindness from our next-door neighbors. 

it feels like yet another symptom of a world that's just completely out of wack. luckily, the actual danes in the neighborhood were quick to help me. when i got to my car, the farmer was there with his tractor, along with another farmer with a big snow mover scoop. one pulled me out and the other cleared the road while we went to the other end, so that i could turn around and drive back home. dinner will just have to be what i already have in the fridge. and i'm thankful for the good people who do live in our area.

when no one was home

i read an article yesterday on the nytimes (when it's online it's on not in, right?). it was about how people who have a lot of family stories and a good sense of their family stories are better at coping both with tragedy and with life in general. and it made me think about sabin's craving for stories. every night at bedtime, she wants a horse story or a cat story or a childhood story. and sometimes no stories come to me, but often they do. stories of runaway ponies and broken carts, races up the second row of trees in the shelter belt when the trees were small, stories of first trophies and first place plaques in obscene quantities or that time that we decided when no one was home to teach switch, our calm paint gelding, to drive. we harnessed him up, made him pull a tire once around the driveway and then just hitched him up to the cart and went for a ride. or the other time when no one was home and we let elvira (a goat) in the house and she trimmed all the plants on the front porch. or the other time no one was home and there was a tornado warning and we brought skip's galley lad (a horse) into the basement. and i say "we" to implicate my sister, but i was nearly six years older and probably should start to take responsibility now. tho' that decision to drive her friend home in the chevette at the age of 12 (because no one was home...hmm, that was apparently a theme) is all on her shoulders, as i was off at college by then.

family stories fill our lives. dad's watermelons in the trees one hot summer, tales of warming his feet in a fresh cowpie as he walked to school barefoot on a frosty morning, or that time the old horse dumped him off into the water tank. or was that uncle red? and don't forget the disassembled ball point pen that got him into so much trouble he never picked up a tool again.

husband remembers at about the age of 4, riding his tricycle down to the harbor where ferries were coming in and out all the time and putting the trike up along the heavy beam, right at harbor's edge and careening as fast as he could along the water, precariously balanced and gripping the handlebars of his tricycle. he also remembers being spanked for it and going right back and doing it again.

we are a most complex sum of our stories and we are constantly adding new ones to the equation of our lives. and to think that they enable us to cope makes so much sense. i wonder if, in the contexts where there are no stories, it's there that things go wrong. there where the stories are separate and not shared, hoarded and even concealed. because stories need to be told, to take on the warmth and life of those who tell and those who hear them. imagine what stories are just waiting to be told.

stitches, objects and memories

ever since working on cleaning out our mother's house, i've been pondering things. the things we collect, stockpile, accumulate over a lifetime. the mundane things - bowls in which we serve dinner, glasses for milk, ceramic bulldogs, socks, tea towels...

i had some breakable glasses wrapped in the tea towel above for the trip home. the glasses are cheery ones from the 50s - with a pink check and a gold rim. i didn't notice that this tea towel had a careful hand-stitched repair of a hole until i went to iron it yesterday. and i welled up. mom must have sat down with it and carefully stitched a fine little oval-shaped patch into place. i find myself wondering when she did it. she couldn't have done it today. she's losing her words for things like needles and thread and while her fingers might remember how to make careful stitches, i'm not certain her mind could any longer make the connections necessary to do so. what made this particular towel worthy of repair? it is a nice, soft towel of the kind that are hard to find these days - the kind that actually absorbs water and which is soft enough to clean your glasses on and have them end up clean. that's part of why i used it to wrap up the glasses, i knew i would appreciate using it when i got home.

mom's house is full of objects and we donated, gave away, threw away and burned a great many of them. but there were things here and there that i wanted to save and take home - like these glasses and this tea towel. i'm not sure what to make of my choices. i don't particularly remember the glasses from my childhood. i think they are something she collected at a flea market in the years after i left home, so there aren't memories attached to them. but still, they spark joy (a factor my sister swears by after reading the marie kondo book). and it means something to have brought them home with me, across half a continent and an ocean. i feel comforted when i use them.

it is, in many ways, a situation without much comfort, this losing your mother to alzheimer's. i have been able to read about it a little bit now, but still haven't found anything that i feel like is the book i need. i think i deal mostly by avoidance. i don't call her much, because it brings it to the surface, hearing her repeat the same stories - the relocation of her cats to another zip code (as she puts it), the evil people who took her driver's license tho' she wasn't hurting anyone, the whereabouts of her (multiple!) guns - hearing her search for words and stumble around in her decreasing vocabulary. it's too raw and distressing. so i seek comfort in drinking my gin and tonic from cheery glasses she chose or fingering the mended stitches on a tea towel. and it hits me that the tea towel could have been my grandmother's and the stitches hers. and she also had alzheimer's and was eventually erased. leaving behind a mended tea towel, that i muse over at my own desk in my home in denmark, so far from where the stitches were stitched. and i wonder if objects can be repositories of memory. and if it will also happen to me...

* * *

speaking of memory and objects, matisse found joy in things as well.

* * *

an interesting piece on alzheimer's as a women's issue in the lenny letter.

thank you, corona

it's the winter solstice. the longest, darkest day of the year, in what's been a long, dark year. 2020 has tried to kick our asses. and it has mostly succeeded. but, i’ll admit that as far as i’m concerned, it also has been pretty good to me. and i’ll also admit that it feels a little problematic of me to say that. but, honestly, it has. i started a new job two days before denmark shut down the first time and said that everyone who chould work at home should work at home. i’ll admit that i was a little freaked out on that friday. i had just returned from a long-planned holiday in barcelona that we didn’t cancel. we didn’t know then how bad the virus would become. we had planned the previous october to meet sabin in barcelona and have a family vacation. and we did it. husband did go home early, because it had rained all of february and the water table was high and leaking at an alarming rate into the pantry adjacent to our kitchen. but we had a wonderful holiday together and even after husband left, sabin and i enjoyed our time together. we had fabulous cocktails, we shopped and ate great food. it really couldn’t have been better. 

 

on that weird friday, two days into my job and with the virus hanging over all of us, it was windy and i stopped at the grocery store in the little town where i work. the wind blew the car door out of my hand as i got out and i was so distracted, i didn’t even notice that it hit the vehicle next to me. unfortunately, the girlfriend of the guy who owned the vehicle did notice and pointed out that my car door had rubbed the dirt off her door when i returned to my car. her hysterical boyfriend rode his bike over to talk to me. i stupidly and distractedly gave them my phone number and they actually reported to insurance that the dirt was rubbed off their door and convinced their friend to declare that the entire car needed repainting. which ended up on my insurance. but i digress. and it was all because i was distracted. and stupidly and unlike me, didn’t take a picture at the scene, so i couldn’t dispute it. i also stupidly let on that i spoke danish. that was dumb. and possibly 2020 getting the best of me. 

but it may have been the only place where it did. because even two days into my new job, i was already included in a big and business critical project. and we managed to do something utterly amazing that i’ve never seen any other company do so quickly. it was pretty amazing and even exhilarating to be part of. and that damn virus made it possible. it was the kind of project that would been hemmed and hawed about and made into smaller pilot projects over a two-year period and we did it in 10 days. thank you, corona. and it’s continued at the same level and pace ever since and i have been continually amazed at the talent of my collagues and the things we can do together. i don’t think this would have become so apparent to me so quickly without the virus. we may be building the plane as we fly it, but damn, we are flying it. thank you, corona. 

my child hasn’t had the ideal start to college that we would have wanted, but she has had a pretty good time and she joined a sorority and made a lot of friends and one of her good friends from high school has transferred to asu as well. and thanks to my privileged position as an american citizen who is a permanent resident of denmark, i could travel to arizona to help her move out of her apartment and into the dorm. with a pitstop at my own asu professor’s home. and even though corona was raging, we wore our masks, we got some essential help from an old bloggy friend who lives in arizona now and we drank quite a lot of coronas (the good kind) by the pool. it was honestly, a lovely summer. and we never tested positive for corona. 

and now, she’s been home for nearly a month and while the darkness and lack of sunshine has been difficult for her, it’s also been great to have her home. she argues with her father and makes him admit defeat. he has to recognize that he is defeated in his white male privilege by the strong women he has raised. and it’s good for him. we’ve had a corona scare this week. a good friend of sabin’s spent the weekend with us last weekend and then tested positive last tuesday. we’ve been tested and tested again and are still negative. we start to wonder if we have some strange immunity that we don’t deserve. but while we await the vaccine, we will take what we can get. and in the meantime, we will eat good food, laugh and play games together and we will appreciate more than we counted on of 2020. thank you, corona, for reminding us of what’s important.

unfocused monday

oh my, did i lack focus today. even right now, as i'm trying to write this, i'm glancing through pinterest on my laptop as my fingers rest on the keyboard of my big computer. maybe it was a monday thing. maybe it was that my to-do list is of daunting proportions. maybe it was because i didn't shower, but just got dressed and rushed off to my first appointment. it wasn't a kind of you-shouldn't-go-out-in-public-stinky-woman lack of a shower, it was more of a that-would-have-really-cleared-your-mind kind of need for a shower. after my appointment (where i presented a good picture of being on top of things) i was so unfocused, i drove a strange backroads route home, which took me past a dairy where they have a cheese store. i wandered in and bought a huge block of havarti. not planned. then i got back in the car and noticed a nursery and popped in to see if they had any artichokes. they did and i also bought wormwood (tho' i didn't know that's what it was at the time) it's called malurt in danish and has absinthe in its latin name, so i thought "score." i also picked up a chili plant, some lovage, tarragon and sage. also rather unfocused. i stopped by the store to pick up milk and cat litter. i came out with nectarines, crackers, creme fraiche and toilet paper. no milk. no cat litter. unfocused, i tell you. i picked up the child and two of her friends. they ate some nectarines. we went home. we walked in the door and i was reminded of our need for cat litter. so i went to the feed store to buy cat food. i came home with bunny food and chicken food as well. i decided to go to another grocery store, where i would surely remember milk and cat litter, plus it was close to the library, where i needed to pick up a book i ordered. i got there and didn't have my phone with me, where the number of my reservation was, so i had to look at two entire shelves of books for a title that looked like i might have ordered it. it turrned out to be bakhtin's theory of the literary chronotope: reflections, applications and perspectives (apparently this lack of focus thing has been going on longer than i thought). this time, i left the store with milk, sugar, cream, flour, brown sugar, 4 pears, 4 apples and 2 bananas. and again, no cat litter. by this time, i was getting good at forgetting the cat litter (*silver lining*). home again, where i tried to settle in to work. but a restlessness came over me and i couldn't sit still. i went out and planted the herbs and the chili. and gathered a basket of elderflowers to make cordial. that made me feel slightly less restless, but then it was really time to do some work. so i settled in at my desk and then someone came to the door. it involved a lengthy chat and a wander in the yard. as if i needed to wander. and then it was time to make dinner. and husband came home and had a headache, so he had a little lie down. when dinner was ready, i couldn't find anyone, even tho' i called and called. so i ate by myself while i stared at my to-do list with a creeping sense of doom. after dinner, the sun had come out, and husband's headache was better, so we had to take a walk. that helped. at least with the restlessness. but i still only got about 3 hours of work done, when it should have been more like ten. let's hope tomorrow is a little more focused. and that i remember the cat litter.

secret 11 - it's hard being the oldest

i grew up in a household full of babies of the family. my mom is the younger of two, my dad is the youngest of nine and of course, my little sister, the youngest in our family. now imagine this, you're the only over-achieving, striving, earnest, responsible member of your family and you're surrounded by irresponsible rebels who think there are no rules to life.

there are five and a half years between me and my sister. this means a couple of things. one, i got good and used to being an only child by the time she came along (and no one asked me, by the way--i'd have preferred to have a goat had i been asked, which may be why i wasn't asked). secondly, i broke our parents in and paved the way for her, so things were smooth and easy when she came along.

since it was a family of littlest siblings, there weren't that many rules in our household. i had just the one, "win or don't come home." which suited me, since i was the eldest. my sister also had one rule. but her rule was "no pot in the living room." fine to keep your pot elsewhere in the house, but just not in the living room. and by pot, i do mean marijuana, weed, ganga. that stuff. tho' i don't think she actually had any in high school. that wasn't 'til later, in college.

although i got my driver's license at 14, i always had to rely on using the family car or the old brown pickup when it was available. i never had my own car, not until i graduated from high school and got a little green mustang that we called iggy. of course, things were different for my sister....much different.

at the age of 12 (i already alluded to this in my driver's license post), she was home alone, playing with a friend. dad's old blue chevette was home and my sister, who was freakishly short for a 12-year-old, decided to give her friend a ride home despite the fact that she had never before driven and could hardly see over the steering wheel. she'd been in the car four years previously during my driving lessons and thought, "how hard can it be to drive a stick?" there was a back way to the friend's house, down gravel roads, so she decided it would be fine to just run her friend home.

they hopped in the chevette and headed down the gravel road. they must have gotten up quite some speed by the time they came to a little artificial hill in the road, created by the old railroad tracks. they hit that bump going way too fast, slid on the loose gravel and flew into the steep ditch. shaken, but unharmed, they hiked a mile across a field, directly to her friend's house. the friend's mom was pretty alarmed and located my dad on the golf course, telling him breathlessly that "the girls are ok."

dad finished his round of golf and went and picked up my sister and she recalls what happened as the most severe lecture she ever got. but all he did was put his hand on her knee and say, "monique. monique. monique." in a grave voice. and that was the end of it. it didn't matter that the radiator was knocked clean through the engine and the car was basically totaled. there were no repercussions. no grounding. no punishment whatsoever. she was at an out-of-town football game three nights later with a gaggle of her friends. i was stunned.

when she got her license at 14, they bought her a little brown station wagon. her own car. no humiliating waiting out front of the school for mom to arrive and pick her up in the old brown pickup. no, no, she had her own car. she could fit half a dozen other kids in it and drive across the river and drive in and out of ditches in the snow for the sheer joy of it. she would announce, "i've got tickets for a poison concert in the big town on tuesday and me and the gang are going over there and i'm driving." and do you think that anyone batted an eye that it was a school night? or that there was a blizzard raging? nope. not at all as long as she kept her pot out of the living room.

and although i didn't try to do any of those things...i wouldn't even have DREAMED of ASKING, let alone done that...i undoubtedly paved the way for her. warmed the parents up so they were more pliable to her whims. or maybe they were that lenient all along and i should have been more daring. but i didn't even try. because i was the oldest. the responsible, over-achieving one. it's hard being the oldest.