monday will sometimes bite you in the ass

it's a balmy 8°C (46°F) outside and foggy. the winds from last week's storm (the increasingly aptly-named bodil), have finally subsided and it's so still you can hear water dripping from the trees. in many ways, it's a really beautiful day, despite it being grey. but it's also a monday and sometimes monday just bites you in the ass.

it actually started already when i woke up with a start, far too early, thinking of a group of friends i had 25 years ago in california. they were a shallow lot and hadn't crossed my mind in years. it wasn't a nice way to wake up. so, as i am wont to do, i grabbed the iPad and checked in to see what was happening in the world of facebook. near the top of my feed was a local friend, expressing delight that she could hear her elementary-age children in the other room, getting into their stockings for their advent calendar presents, and exclaiming "shit and fuck" with delight over their gifts. it made her feel like she'd really picked the right presents. yes, these swear words coming from the mouths of kindergarten and second graders, were words of joy and christmas cheer. and their mother was proud.

after all these years, i do realize that our english swear words, while in widespread use in denmark, do not carry the same meaning or impact that they do in english. and i freely use them, even the f-word, myself. however, i never get used to them coming from the mouths of babes. i just really think that's not cool. and it still causes an almost literal jolt of culture shock when i hear (or in this case, read) it.  i commented on the post that where i grew up, if i'd reacted to my christmas gifts with swearing, i'd have had my mouth washed out with soap. one of the others commenting on the post responded that there was nothing about swearing. she didn't even recognize shit and fuck as swear words. i knew then it was going to be that kind of day.

soon after that, my child began texting me, plaguing me to let her get the office package for her macbook air. yes, my child, requesting to put a microsoft product on a mac. she may as well have asked for a ferrari with a ford engine. it made me realize i've utterly failed as a parent. so, determined to end it all, i headed down to the lake. only to find that the tree from which i had planned to hang myself had toppled in the storm. trees around here just give up so easily.

ok, i wasn't really going to kill myself, that was just for dramatic and humorous effect.

soon it was time to go pick up the child from school. she and her friends got in the car and began talking in a sort of pidgin danglish and it was driving me completely mad. i was so not in the mood for it. it was like when someone keeps repeating what you say and you want them to stop and they won't. i had that same panicky feeling that comes from that. like it might never stop and you will probably have to stab someone before it's all over. and then there will be a mess and the explaining to the parents...

but then the phone rang, it was a neighbor, telling me that our horses were out and running around in the fog on the road. so we rushed home. the girls jumped out of the car (thereby ending the danglish madness) and grabbed them and started walking them home. and yes, they were just hanging out on the road. silly horses. then some maniac drove by at high speed and the two they had hold of got away again and the chase was on. and do you think that asshole took a look in her rearview mirror at the chaos she had wrought? no, she did not. but i grabbed a bucket of grain and a couple of leadropes and we got them in. they were all snorty and excited after their adventures.

i kind of just want to crawl in bed and have this day end. but i guess some days are like that. especially mondays.

the damage bodil did

this was husband's wood drying barn.

look how it lifted the entire foundation out of place.

that amazing pinkish-orange light is the sunrise.

and the roof is folded neatly in half

husband got up there and fixed that hole in the roof during the storm.

he's a keeper, i tell you.

the winds haven't really subsided yet, tho' the skies are mostly clear. it continues to blow out there, tho' not with the same force as around 5 p.m. yesterday. we didn't lose any trees here at the property around the house. but we haven't checked our forest yet. a neighbor had a couple of trees down over his own driveway and couldn't even get out. the big barn next door shed a whole lot of sharp shards of roofing onto our lawn. i'm glad we weren't standing out there when they blew free. all of the animals (horses, bunnies, chickens and cats) are safe. and so are we. and that's what matters.

bodil vs. sven: same storm, different name

storm outside - red velvet mocha with whipped cream (including cream cheese) on top inside.

a storm is raging outside. the incompetent danish meteorological institute (which pretty much just makes shit up as far as the weather is concerned) has dubbed it bodil (a name usually applied to middle aged women with asymmetrical haircuts wearing capri pants with three-quarter length boots). they say it's tapering off and i guess there are less creaks and groans coming from the roof at the moment, but it doesn't really seem over. a big piece of the roof of the oldest part of the house (the bit we want to tear down anyway) came off. husband was out there for over an hour on a ladder, battling some big boards into place. if a section of roof had to come off, it was a good spot, over a little "alley" between the two houses (the old part, where my kitchen is today) and the length of the house that was barn (where the new kitchen is slowly taking shape). we'll have to see it in daylight tomorrow.

unfortunately, all of the work husband did this summer, building a drying barn for his wood has come to naught, as that structure came down and now looks like kindling. he actually saw it happen, but there wasn't a thing he could do.

of course, there is much talk about the storm on facebook. one of my facebook friends expressed that he was tired of the media totally exaggerating the storm (tho' personally, i don't think they're exaggerating at all) and thought it was ridiculous that the trains were all canceled. the big bridges are closed as well and even the smaller little belt bridge is closed. i commented that it certainly wasn't exaggerated out at our place. then one of his friends remarked that well, "this time the storm was a woman, so..." remarks like that make me tired. it seems sexism is alive and well in denmark, but not in sweden, where this same storm is called sven.