a toothy problem

it's windy and blustery outside and grey and the weather seems generally cranky. and it's rubbing off on me. and it's not improved by an email exchange with the municipality dentist people. you see, children's dentistry is provided for free until they are 18 in denmark. they should be called in yearly for a checkup and until the 6th grade, sabin was. and it occurred to me (and her) recently that she hadn't been invited for a checkup in nearly two years! 

so, i went to the municipality's website to look up contact details. they have a "self service" button that you're supposed to press and make your own appointment (the government in denmark wants everything to happen electronically, but alas, hasn't really set up the systems to support it). right above that is a big long message about how the self-service is currently out of service. so i managed to find an email address to write to, since no one ever answers the phone numbers that are buried about three layers in. i think they have a secret 5 minute window where they answer the phone that you have to try to guess. and probably as soon as someone guesses it, they change it, so good luck getting through.

originally, i wrote on february 4, asking for an appointment for the child. funnily enough, i didn't get any response. no email back, not even an automatic "we received your mail," and definitely no appointment. and this, even tho' i wrote in danish, so it wasn't that they were intimidated by an email in english. so yesterday, i wrote again, this time specifically requesting a response (and a little put out that that was even necessary). 

a couple of years ago, i did a big research project where i talked to a lot of foreigners living in denmark and from them, i repeatedly heard a story of how the municipalities are a bit lax with the children's dental offer towards children with foreign parents. i heard again and again how kids with crooked teeth were assured they didn't need braces and how checkups were offered less often than to purely danish kids. and i rather smugly thought that i had never experienced that. but now i'm starting to wonder. with an aging population, the welfare state in denmark has to begin to make choices regarding their resources. so to let a few children with a foreign parent slip through the cracks on the dentistry offer would probably save a few kroner here and there. in my second mail, i brought this up and said i hoped that wasn't the case.

this morning, i had an answer. although i had signed my name, the answer was rudely not addressed to anyone, no "dear julie," no "hi julie," it just launched into a question regarding the child's social security number, which, unfortunately, i had typed incorrectly in my original mail. i answered back with her correct number and received an answer with a time in one month, at 9 a.m., during the school/work day. in other words, not a convenient or possible time.  she also provided a link to the non-functioning self-service, as if it were working (or perhaps she was unaware that it wasn't working), pedantically telling me how i could look up the records and make appointments there myself. if only it were working. i took a screenshot of the message about how it's not working and said that i would have been happy to make the appointment that way, were it possible. and while she was generally responsive and answering my mails right away, she ignored that part of my mail.

she also tried to tell me that they had sent multiple appointments to us and that maybe we hadn't checked our e-boks (the electronic system where all communication from the state now happens). i do check my e-boks regularly, because i have it set up to send me a mail when there is something there. but i checked it again and funnily enough, there were no mails from the municipality regarding dentist appointments. oddly enough, husband doesn't have any either. and the only conclusion i can draw from that is that she lied about that or sent them to some other parents.

being a conflict-shy dane, she also completely ignored my question about sabin being pushed allowed to fall through the cracks because she has a foreign parent. like she didn't even see that bit. and in all of her answers, despite my modeling back to her the correct way to write a mail, with a salutation of "dear so-and-so or the more normal danish version of "hi so-and-so," she continued to rudely refuse to follow the conventions of basic email etiquette and politeness.

funnily enough, in the middle of this, the postman came to the door with the mail and in it, there was a postcard from the local school dentist, with a time for sabin on february 18. and it arrived today, on february 24. so we missed it because we didn't know about it. and a postcard is quite different than an electronic letter. i tried to call the number of the local school dentist that's on the postcard, but i apparently missed today's 5 minute window, because it just rang and rang and cycled back through the system. so we are still appointmentless and it's been two years and counting.

well done, vejle kommune. well done.  (you might recall that this isn't the first time vejle kommune has had an epic fail.) 

* * *

the day continues in weirdness mode. the telemarketers are getting more and more cheeky. on principle, i don't answer my phone if it is a blocked number, but i suppose that happens quite a lot for telemarkers, so they have started to call from numbers that show. because of my waiting state, i answer the phone, even if i don't recognize the number. this one was a young man who wanted to ask me some follow-up questions about a contest i'd supposedly participated in online. not having participated in any online contests (buzz feed quizzes don't count), i laughed and said that was weird. he got really mad and said i had and that i had provided my full name and address and phone number, tho' funnily enough, he wouldn't tell me what my full name was, or even my first name, nor my address. i just kept laughing and then he got petulant and said he'd give the trip to spain to someone else. you go right ahead and do that, buddy.

* * *

fat cat photobombs famous paintings with hilarious results.

sometimes you have to call a spade a spade

that pipe says "danger zone"

imagine this scenario: you're coming down with a cold and feeling a bit achy and under the weather, so you're making yourself a nice warm cup of elderberry cordial. your phone rings and you answer, stating your name in lieu of hello, as you've been forced into coerced taught by the culture of the country in which you live. the person on the other end doesn't identify himself, but instead sarcastically asks who he has gotten hold of. you repeat your name, mentally kicking yourself for not asking who the hell he was first. then he finally reveals that he's the rhino from the ungdomsskole (remember the one that's supposed to be taking sabin to st. petersburg in 10 days?) and you've filled out the visa application totally incorrectly (despite filling it out exactly as he advised you on the phone last saturday) and you need to turn some password over to him immediately, as he's sitting at the russian embassy in copenhagen. you say that rather than turn over a password (who does that to someone on the phone?), you would gladly log into the application and make the requested changes (tho' he hadn't said what they were yet at that point), since it should probably be you anyway as the child's parent. and despite not having said what the changes should be, but just condescendingly accusing you of filling it out wrongly, he gets very snippy and demands your password again.

you're standing outside, since the reception is rubbish in the house, but you can't for the life of you remember any password on the visa application site. and if you did set a password, it's one you commonly use (you bad) and you don't want to just hand it out to some condescending asshole on the phone. so again, you try to calmly state that you would be glad to log into the russian embassy system and make the changes (provided you are told what they are, since, again, you filled it out per the rhino's instructions while on the phone with him last saturday). since he was at the actual embassy, they would surely be able to access the updated form on their end and use the correct information.

but he goes on in the most condescending tone, as if you are a small, dull child, saying the equivalent of "listen here missy" (høre nu her) that you must immediately turn over the password to him or you can just go to copenhagen yourself next week and secure the visa. and that point, you completely see red, switch to english and end up calling him, and i quote, a fucking asshole, among a rather lot of other things, which may also have included swear words. bearing in mind that danes use the word fuck freely and it doesn't have the same impact to them that it does to you, you mean it with every fiber of your being in that moment and you mean it in the strong american sense of the words, even as you realize you probably shouldn't have gone there. but seriously, this asshole, who has been abominably disorganized and has still, tho' the trip is due to leave in 11 days, not provided an itinerary, flight details or any other information about the trip, has the nerve to be a condescending prat to you on the phone because you filled out a form as he instructed. unbelievable.

as you might guess, all of this happened to me this afternoon. and after i hung up and went inside to make changes to the visa, i learned that there isn't a password - all you needed was the visa application number (which he had on a physically-printed piece of paper) and the first five letters of sabin's last name, which was clearly stated in the blank beside it. there wasn't a password. so he was a complete ass for absolutely no reason.

there is a worrying thread running through all of the encounters i've had thus far with the ungdomsskole. it started already at our parents meeting when the leader of our local outpost told a highly sardonic and condescending (not to mention sexist) story about how sometimes young people's mothers call him to sign their kids up for things that he thought the kids should sign themselves up for. i suppose i'm being put in this box as well, as i am a mother who, funnily enough, is involved in preparing her 12-year-old daughter's visa application for a trip to russia. apparently, these kids should just do these things for themselves. and if, as a mother, i want to know something more about what my child will experience, is that seriously too much to ask? an itinerary, possibly some flight details, for a school trip to russia? isn't that just a given? these disorganized clowns haven't even managed that. on the other hand, it's likely that the trip will fall through, as they've gone to hand in the visa applications far too late. from what i can read on the russian website, it will take at least ten working days, maybe 7 if we're lucky, and there are only 6 working days left before their departure.

i truly hate to find myself becoming one of those sort of righteous danish women, but there you have it. i've been pressed into it by a condescending, misogynist ass of a danish man. and while i will admit i shouldn't have called him a fucking asshole. he really was a fucking asshole.

* * *

and to take our minds off all of this, some interesting photos.

or have you read sinead's open letter to miley cyrus?

princeton or bust

thankfully, i had no odd dreams of dominatrix school principals, instead my nightmares were of an education system bent on making sure my daughter becomes a plumber or electrician (not that those are bad professions, it's just that i'm not sure that's the route she should take).

there was much talk last evening, by an overly tan man with long, white hair (can you say 70s leftover?), of how the kids would be counseled towards their ungdomsuddannelse. already in the 8th grade, they will make a plan for their future education (because you totally know what you want to do/be when you're 13). that rings a little soviet in my ears - having the state decide what you'll be at an early age and then seeing that you become it. i think russia groomed a lot of scientists that way. but denmark's ambitions are a bit lower, it seems they're more interested in grooming carpenters and plumbers (tho' there aren't enough apprentice spots for these professions, so many people taking those courses never become those things). but, we shouldn't forget that low ambition is what keeps the danes at the top of those happy lists, so there's that.

but it all raises my hackles. partly, i will admit, because i'm not entirely clear as to what is meant by ungdomsuddannelse (youth education, if i translate literally). here, mandatory school is through the 9th grade, with an optional 10th grade (many people take that at an efterskole (a boarding school that specializes in something or other - often sports, or riding or music or even media studies)). after that, if you eventually want to go to university, you tend to go to a 3-year gymnasium (somewhere between our high school and the first year of college). if you're not university bound, you can go to technical schools of various kinds. is it those technical schools and maybe even the efterskole that are ungdomsuddannelse, or is it all of it, including gymnasium and university? that's very unclear, even in the three pages of materials they gave to us last night.

basically, i want to know how they're going to help my child get into princeton. or if they're going to try to lead her down a path towards moped mechanic (that was actually mentioned). i'm being a bit facetious here. i'm not sure i really want her to go to princeton (berkeley or columbia would be ok too), but my point is that i want her to think that anything is possible and not that she has to follow a narrowly prescribed path determined by some aging hippie who didn't even know her when she was in middle school. and how will we ever know where she's going if she doesn't take the SAT?

that's the other thing that's not clear. since there's not much standardized testing in denmark, how do they determine what they call uddannelsesparathed (educational readiness). is it entirely subjective? is it determined by a bunch of teachers who frankly, have been questionably educated themselves in seminarium that are somewhere in the neighborhood of a suburban american junior college academically? are the kids out here in udkantsdanmark (the countryside/fringes) especially pushed in the direction of such professions by current political forces? (a story i heard on the radio yesterday suggested as much.) can your location determine what you can be when you grow up? the future of my child is hanging in the balance here and i can't see what it's balancing upon.

the only thing that's clear is that it's denmark's current goal to get these kids out there and through their education as quickly as possible so they can begin to be good little taxpayers. let's face it, those politicians aren't getting any younger, so they need to ensure that the next generation is paying for their pensions.

and now i'm off to google boarding schools in switzerland.

* * *

that's four more items off my "to blog" list from the parents' meeting last evening.

november wakes up on the wrong side of the bed

i hate to start off november with a rant, but there you have it. husband is on one of his snoring kicks and i woke up about 72 times in the night, so i'm grumpy. there's a fine mist hitting me in the face whenever i step outside to do chicken and rabbit chores. the horse is still lame. and she's getting crabby too. our washing machine is down and tho' i've called a repairman, they're extremely imprecise about when he'll show up. a rant is simply in the dark, chilly, damp autumn air.

*  *  *

i tried to cheer myself up with a little browse of my google reader via flipboard. and can i just say that those blogs where there's only a truncated feed and you can't see the whole post without clicking an extra step....i'm just not going to read those anymore. the reality of today is that people are reading on a device - an iPad, an iPhone - and it's a big pain in the ass to have to click an extra step. i know all the reasons why one would truncate the post...to make sure the visits are counted...but really, it's just arrogant and annoying. and i'm done clicking the extra step.

*  *  *

i'm reading another bad book. elaine feinstein's biography of anna akhmatova, anna of all the russias. and it's just bad. she extrapolates all kinds of biographical details from anna's poetry, as if they're true and not art. clearly the woman couldn't be bothered to do real research - she doesn't properly explain who anyone is or their connections. she appears to have only the vaguest knowledge of the russian revolution.  it's just a bad book. luckily, it's not a novel, so i can put it down without finishing it. i'll be taking it back to the library today.

*  *  *

i no longer have any patience or time for things and people who drive me crazy. meddling. being too involved. not just letting me get on with what's ostensibly my responsibility, that stuff pisses me off. and makes me want to take a step (or two) back. this is why i'm not in the corporate world anymore.

*  *  *

another thing that's driving me crazy is how people wear stress as a badge. as if it's a good thing to be so busy that you feel totally stressed out. here's a news flash: it's not. and i'm not impressed by your bragging about how stressed you are. it doesn't mean you're important, and it may actually mean that you're stupid.

*  *  *

ok, i'm going to stop grumping now.

i'm actually very happy because handmade holiday starts today

and i'm really excited to share a lot of fun projects

with a lot of fun people.

it's not too late to join us!

feeling ranty (or am i a woman yet?)

i'm feeling a little ranty (i blame caitlin moran).  so avert your eyes.

rant #1:  i'm still fuming over the far-too-expensive ferry ride we took on mols-linien from ebeltoft to odden a week or so ago. as any of my FB and twitter pals know, due to my obsessive photographing of it, there is a rather large bridge (18km) that takes you to the devil's island (sjælland), but for fun, we thought we'd take an alternate route. mols-linien had been bragging in their ads about how if you took them you'd skip fyn (the island in the middle) and how they had cheap tickets over kattegat. turns out those cheap tickets that compete with the price of the bridge (220DKK or about $42) have to be ordered at least 7 days in advance. so much for spontaneity. and so much for truth in advertising, because that's definitely not clear in the ads. nor are any of the prices clear on the mobile version of their website. which i found worrying as i tried to check departure times/prices as we got closer to ebeltoft. turns out if you don't book in advance you pay the OUTRAGEOUS sum of 775DKK ($147) for the hour-long crossing. and this doesn't come with anything. you then have to pay 3 times the normal price for a sausage (every ferry ride must include a sausage) and a coke, so they are definitely adding insult to injury. my advice?  AVOID MOLS-LINIEN like the plague. there is NO value for money. none at all. and their little high speed ferries are ugly.   take that, mols-linien.

rant #2:  as you know, we live out on a country road. it's paved and the speed limit is actually a shocking 80km/hour.  however, most of the people who are going past (i don't have a radar gun, so i can't prove this) are going at least 120km/hour. it's INSANE. there are people out for a run, or walk or bike ride and the cars scarcely even slow down. in fact, most of them don't slow down. someone's going to get killed and i hope it's not me, my family, our cats or our hedgehog. i do, however, hope there is a fiery crash where one of those speed demons rolls multiple times and i can stand and laugh.

rant #3:  as you gathered, i continue to read caitlin moran's how to be a woman with a mix of the fascination one would feel to see the aforementioned crash and indignation at how in one breath she can claim to be feminist and then refer to women as chicks.  and then i fall a little bit in love with her when she says that lady gaga is the most exciting pop artist since madonna. so i'm torn by her. her writing is like rock 'n roll - it's loud, it's in your face, it makes me feel hyper (and ranty) and it's just really good. but a lot of this shit she's saying is just pissing me off.

ok. ranting over. for now.

EDITED:  wait a minute, hold everything, i totally forgot to rant the main rant!!!

rant #4: getty images. grr.  last week, was pleased to receive a flickr mail telling me that the good folks at getty images had selected a number of my photos and would like to license them. they're mostly ones of the old kitchen, the blue room and sabin's two bedrooms, plus one of my rainbow snail. so, i made haste to the getty images website to sign up. the sign-up is all very official and of course, asks you a lot of questions about your details - address, paypal account, where you pay taxes. and because i live in denmark, i was not able to sign up as anything other than a non-american. i've run into ameri-centric sites before (hello there, eBay and yes, i mean you, best buy), but none that actually wanted me to commit perjury in order to complete the invitation that THEY sent to me. after three days of going back and forth with several different "customer support" people, i finally agreed to commit perjury. yes, i wanted to sell my photos THAT badly. but seriously. i must not be the only expat american living abroad who has ever licensed their photos through getty images. and i think it's downright bogus that i had to pretend to pay taxes somewhere else in order to accomodate a faultily-crafted website. boo. hiss. getty images.  that said, get to selling my photos, will you?

and now i'm done ranting. for now.

in which she rants about a bunch of annoying little things

if you're not in the mood for a rant, just look at the pretty sunrise and don't read any farther

i know i've been in an extraordinarily exuberant good mood of late and that it's probably getting on everyone's nerves, here in the dark, cold, grey depths of january. so lest you think it's all sunshine and roses in my life and moreover in my brain, i give you a few annoying things i've been thinking about...

~ WHAT is up with not using the word seamstress? all of the politically-correct supposedly hip sewing sites are referring to women who sew as sewists. why do this when seamstress is already a perfectly good word...laden with history and without negative connotation as far as my native speaker's ear can hear. i don't want to be referred to a sewist. pretentious gits.

~ why do the weirdest things stick in your mind at some stupid moment? case in point: the other day, we had guests and i was boiling water to make both coffee and tea. i made the coffee first and then needed to fill the kettle up for there to be enough water for the teapot. normal me would just top off the kettle from the tap and put it back on. but no, because there's a real brit standing there watching, some obscure warning i once read that you should only make tea by starting off with fresh, cold tap water in the kettle kicks into my head. and to the amazement of everyone watching, i poured out all that hot water and started over. and the brit wasn't even going to DRINK the tea, he was going to drink coffee!! bah!

~ i adore craft books and especially the sewing/quilting ones. today, for her birthday, sabin received the visually gorgeous sewing bits & pieces: 35 projects using fabric scraps by sandi henderson from my mom (mom likes to support our sewing habit). the book is lush and beautiful and thankfully sabin had to go to school, so i could sit down with it. the bright fabrics are just my idea of heaven, but then i got to the picnic quilt. it's a beautiful scalloped design. so far, not annoying, but here it comes...it's described as the most laid-back quilt that you can put together in an afternoon - intricately-cut scallop pieces, which you must cut with a scissors, not a rotary wheel and have to iron into a CURVE by making a special cardboard template and wrapping it in aluminum foil. and even then, you're not done, as you have to carefully lay it all out. one illustration even shows a good dozen pins holding one scallop in place. this is not an easy quilt, lady. so why say so? just to show off? because you're so much better than us? bah.

~ i'll probably be in trouble with the entire modern quilting community now for saying that...but seriously, people, someone's got to start saying something. we want need books that have good directions and good advice, and don't talk to down to us, not just pretty photos and showing off how skilled the quilter sewist seamstress writing it is.

~ you cannot use the kettle and the iron in this house at the same time. and even if you turn only one of them on, the lights visibly dim.

~ i hate my kitchen. the door under the sink, which you open frequently, since the trash is there, has a problem with the latch and will not shut properly. the kitchen is pepto-bismol pink and although i bought paint to cover that up, even husband (who has loads of energy and loves to paint) thinks it's not worth the energy to do that painting. and don't even get me started about the stove. one of those ridiculous glass-topped numbers. the only advantage of which is ease of wiping up. otherwise, whoever invented that shit should be taken out back and shot, along with the asshole who bought this one.

~ what the hell are those little "& nspb " things that get inserted into the HTML if you move a block of text from one spot to another? all they do is mess up your spacing!

~ my new obsession with kit lane's fabulous little felted creatures causes me to sit on her etsy shop and hit refresh. and sadly, it's still empty. :-(

* * *

i hope that reassured everyone that i haven't become some ridiculous sap on the verge of homeschooling my now 10-year-old child...i must say that now i'm feeling much better and i'm headed back to the sewing machine.

* * *

and on a totally un-ranty note, please check out the house tour of our wonderful old house over on rearranged design!

in which she despairs at the state of the world

i'm in despair once again at the state of society. it's brought on by my reading of susan sontag's on photography. every sentence of this book is packed with meaning. it's thought-provoking and stimulates the intellect in a way that i'll admit i haven't experienced in far too long. the book was written in 1977 when it seems that theory still meant something, before postmodernism got hold of it and stripped meaning of meaning.  don't get me wrong, i'll admit i wholly embraced postmodernism - my shelves are filled with deleuze and guattari, derrida, baudrillard and the like. i am an educational product of the early to mid-90s, what can i say, i rolled around in the postmodernists and adored them, despite the fact that they ultimately deprived the world of any meaning at all.

as i've said before, i write in books. i scribble in the margins, i underline, i make stars and asterisks and draw little pairs of glasses where there's something i want to look up. i scrawl lightbulbs where the text gives me ideas and at times can scarcely decipher my own handwriting, so anxious i apparently was to get a thought down that it's illegible. as you can see in the shot above, sontag's on photography is full of scribblings and underlinings already and i'm only about 40 pages in. i've already got enough fodder and photo titles for my photo-a-day project for the entire month of february. but best of all, my brain is thinking again. i'm not sure when it stopped, but it had stopped. and oddly, i hadn't realized it until i picked up this book.

we were sitting at the breakfast table this morning with our tea and the sunday paper and i came across the illustration above. apparently, young people are so taken with the universe presented in james cameron's avatar that they come away from the film depressed. the blue-skinned girl, in 3D glasses is crying on her mother's knee, saying how sad she is and her mother comforts her, saying she understands, her father was the same after he'd seen all of the episodes of the brewer on DR. they're of course poking fun at this notion, but still. the fact that they've devoted a whole page of the sunday magazine to the notion that young people are depressed because they can't live within a movie, is startling. and is what makes me despair about the state of society. i think everyone should go read something real. i know i'm going to...

it was a dark and stormy day...

blame it on the moon

Rxbambi tagged me earlier this week to do a list of six things that get me pissed. initially i was going to make a list of my favorite kinds of gin, but then i realized it wasn't that kind of pissed.  on that particular day, i was feeling that the world was quite rosy and couldn't actually think of six things, but let me tell you, now i can...

1. big sisters using sabin's mobile - sabin's big sisters have their own mobile phones, but they always go nuts texting all of their friends on hers when they're here, because theirs are the pre-paid card kind and they don't want to use up their own SMSes. i'm normally fine with this because we've got an unlimited SMS plan on sabin's phone, she doesn't use any herself and so it seems ok that it gets used. UNTIL....i learned today that they had subscribed to some stupid spam-like SMS thing that repeatedly sends you texts about a hummingbird and it costs 15DKK every time. that's $3. which translates to $36 a month. which pisses me off like you wouldn't believe. especially because i hadn't looked closely at that bill and it's now the 3rd month the charge appears there (so much for my attentiveness to bills, eh?). i hadn't looked at it because sometimes sabin calls my norwegian number when i'm in norway and i thought it was just that. it wasn't. grr.
2. whipping wind - it's been blowing steadily for two days and i'm really. really. really. tired. of. it.
3. people who send an invitation to a party (that's not a wedding but just an ordinary dinner party) three months in advance - i have no friggin' clue whether i want to have dinner with you three months from now. call me the day before. fokken danes.
4. sexist misogynist dinosaurs in shipping - i don't actually encounter them very often, but when i do, it pisses me off like nothing else. do. not. underestimate. me. just. because. i'm. a. girl. or i shall plant this jessica simpson stiletto squarely in your eyeball.
5. Thuesen Jensen - they're the danish importer of Kitchen Aid products. they have no web presence--their "website" goes to an eLearning log-in thing. they are impossible to contact, no phone number, no email and they are absolute rubbish at service (which one supposes is why they are impossible to contact). they are giving Kitchen Aid a bad name. i have on two occasions now had a problem with the Kitchen Aid food processor i bought last summer. and twice, instead of just giving me a new one and then dealing with it on their end, they made the shop send it in, taking nearly a month to fix it both times. so, i've been without my food processor (which i use regularly) for two of the eight months i've owned it. i just got it back again, with a new bowl on it. why didn't they give me that the first time they took it, since it was the same problem both times. i really think Kitchen Aid should know how bad they are and what a bad name they're giving to Kitchen Aid. i only know their name because i dragged it out of my local shop. and now, i hope that this reference to their name comes up the next time someone googles Thuesen Jensen, because they are complete and utter crap and should have their rights to import Kitchen Aid taken away. when someone pays 3500DKK ($700USD) for their fokken food processor, they expect it to work and if it doesn't, they expect to have a new one that does work inside of about 3 minutes. end. of. story. it better stay fixed this time, or you all will be reading about this on a daily basis. (sorry to threaten you when i'm really threatening them.)
6. people with the wrong priorities - certain family members recently failed to be there on two big occasions--mathilde's confirmation and the party celebrating aunty M's dictionary. i think that's really friggin' selfish and egotistical. you can put off going to your precious summer house where you go every weekend all summer long for things that happen only once in a lifetime. how often does a young person get confirmed (if they're not baptist or whatever)? and how often do you celebrate the culmination of ten years' work? get your fokken priorities straight. there are certain things you are simply obligated to do. these two things were prime examples of them. 

hmmm...it seems like it might be that time that rolls around every month when husband gets really annoying. why do you suppose he does that? speaking of him, where is he and why isn't he making me some dinner?

perhaps i need that gin list after all:

1. hendrick's
2. beefeater crown jewel (in the purple bottle)
3. g'vine
4. bombay sapphire
5. beefeater 24
6. the local indian gin i had one time in chennai (believe me, it was the only good thing about chennai)

on that note, i think i'll go check out how we're fixed for tonic. i know i just bought limes...

DHL bites

there is a distinct lack of customer service in this country, i guess because minimum wage is in the neighborhood of $25/hour and people are not dependent on serving customers well for their salary. it drives me absolutely batty at times. let me give you the latest example...yesterday, DHL tried to deliver a package of MOO cards to me when i was not at home. so i take the half-filled-out form that their driver, who apparently had a palsy of some sort, left in my mailbox and go to their website. there, typical of all too many companies today, they try to make it completely impossible for you to get in touch with them except through some wholly incomprehensible and very narrowly defined forms and drop-downs that don't really quite describe your problem. so i fill out a form and i get a chance to enter the package number and my phone number and email address before some glitch happens and it submits itself and won't let me back in to try to fill it out completely. it apparently "knew" better than i did that the form had been submitted once and you can apparently only do one per day (i pity companies that have more than one package coming).

so, this morning, i tried again. and after filling it all out with my address and phone and the times i am home, i get a mail asking me where i wanted it delivered. hello? to the address that is now both on the package and on your stupid form, people! AND on top of it, they tell me it cannot be delivered before monday, despite the fact that i actually sent the request YESTERDAY! what do they not understand about their business--it's about getting a package quickly, for which they charge a small fortune. and then they have the audacity to be pissy that i'm a little pissy that i cannot get my package in a timely manner! after i expressed frustration that it was to the address that was on the package and on the form and why were they asking me for an address...they actually sent a mail telling me to "speak nicely or they wouldn't help me get my package." (just because i wrote in all caps.) righteous bastards. unbelievable. and it caused my blood pressure to go through the roof! on top of it, i write to them in english and they keep writing back to me in danish! not that i can't read it, but still, it's just such a lack of customer service!

and it's not the first time DHL has been less than stellar. i had a box of brochures sent to me to take to a conference and they claimed they had tried to deliver (which they couldn't have, because there had been someone home all day that day) and so i asked them to forward it on to my hotel in germany because i had to catch a plane and didn't have time to pick it up. they told me that would be impossible, and although they took the hotel address, they said they would call me if it was possible. well, they never called (and i had given them two different mobile numbers, both of which i had on me). and the package never came. however, an invoice for nearly 3,000NOK ($428) came to me at work! WHAT? the absurdity! for a service they said they couldn't do and apparently didn't do, but had no qualms billing for. and it was a small box, the size of 2 reams of paper! unbelievable.

ok. i'm done ranting now.

serenity now

i'm starting with this lovely, calming image of a dahlia that's growing in my greenhouse because i need to quiet my mind and stop obsessing. but for some strange reason, that's proving difficult at the moment. to explain why, i have to back up a bit.

like about 3 years. 

three summers ago, we visited my family in the US. our best friends, a danish couple, and their three children came along with us. they spent every minute of this vacation depending upon us (mostly me) for their every experience. i had been working very hard and was looking forward to relaxing and seeing my family. but, the vacation was far from relaxing. 

we drove about 4000km all over the upper midwest. we went up tall buildings, we experimented in museums of science and industry, we ate huge plates of food, we camped, we rode horses, we took a balloon ride, we went to a baseball game, we ate great food, we explored a cave, we set up a real teepee, we ate some more food, we walked around the devil's tower, we shopped in outlet malls, we had a milkshake in an authentic diner somewhere in minnesota, we saw them blasting at crazy horse and cleaning the face of mt. rushmore. 

we spent two and a half weeks doing it all. and i spent that time leading the way and making decisions as to what we would do because no matter how many brochures i spread out on the picnic table the night before, the next morning when it was time to decide what to do, everyone looked at me. and then when i decided, they muttered to themselves afterwards that it was too touristy or too expensive or there were too many norwegians (true story, at the cave in the black hills). i did not find this very relaxing. in fact, i found it rather stressful and i was stressed out to begin with.

to compound the situation, we learned that our friends' english just wasn't very good. this, of course, caused stress for them. when you're in a loud restaurant and the waiter rattles of 16 choices of dressing and 6 different choices of potato, you feel pretty overwhelmed. if you're the husband in this couple, you get really, really pissy and starting throwing the "f" word around left and right, because it packs a whole lot less punch in danish than it does in english. and you are somehow so obtuse that you don't realize that you're in fact in a place where you may think you're speaking danish, but all anyone around you hears is "fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck." and that people, especially people in the midwest, do not find this charming.

so, when we got home, i thought, we take a cooling off period and we spend less time with these friends. but, they were so traumatized by the traffic the last day in chicago (we were, thankfully, in separate mini-vans for the vacation), that they called and  "resigned" our friendship. that's the exact phrase they used, "vi opsiger vores venskab." like it was a job or something. 

for three years, i have a felt a bit bad about this. not on a daily basis, but occasionally. i have especially felt really bad that although my family went out of their way to make sure these friends had a great time (cooking breakfast for 10 people isn't easy, but my mom did it uncomplainingly), it was never acknowledged by our friends. my sister arranged and paid for the balloon ride. my aunt hauled out SEVEN kayaks so everyone could kayak on the river. my own services as tour guide aside, don't you think they should have had the decency to send a small thank you note to my family for the great experiences they had?

do you think they did this?

you'd be right if you said, "no, i don't think they did."

and that's what's bothered me for 3 years. that and that i really NEEDED that vacation and it wasn't relaxing at all.

so, when planning the big party for our housewarming, we decided to bury the hatchet and invite these people. i sent them an invitation. i requested a response (for the caterer) by aug. 1. it is today august 14. we called and asked whether they were coming. they were very pleasant on the phone, but had another engagement, so they were not coming. but do you think they had the decency to tell us that? bear in mind they had received a written invitation in the mail with a specific request for RSVP by a specific date.

you'd be right if you said, "no, i don't think they did."

and so i'm all riled up again and in need of serenity now. this should SO totally not bother me at all after three years. it is completely in character. so why am i hurt and bothered by it? what on earth is wrong with me? why does it bother me that they are clearly rude and badly raised? it's really not my problem, but yet it's me feeling badly about it. they surely show no sign of it. the only thing that should bother me is my own stupidity for having thought it would be ok to invite them.

actually, in writing this, i do realize that there is some humor in the situation, so it will be ok, but man does it in some sense make me feel sad and hurt all over again. and that's not much fun. when will i ever learn? 

* * *

thankfully, just after writing all of this, on truth cycles, i found a place to make myself my own serenity goddess. so perhaps she'll help me (i gave her a skull necklace to scare off all of the evil):

organic produce trend consultant

caution: a bit of a rant ahead (but at least i'm inspired to blog again!)

it's not a new notion--"you are what you eat." and i've long looked askance and perhaps a tad judgmentally at what the person ahead of me in the grocery line places on the belt, but now it's confirmed by a study conducted by a danish "future researcher" (i want to be one of those, or maybe an "idea consultant," but more about that later).

according to this woman, who has her own company devoted to this so-called "future research"--firstmove--what we eat and drink says a whole lot about us. these are decisions we make on a daily basis, not a one-time investment like a car or a home. we make lifestyle choices every day as we troll the aisles of our grocery stores. and apparently companies are very interested in these lifestyle choices.

the study looks at three groups--the young (20-35 years), families with children and 50+. the study thus far suggests that food reflects our lifestyle in general in a different way than it did 10-15 years ago. a lot more environmental awareness has come into the picture. this sounds excellent to me. all three groups they looked at had high requirements with regard to organic foods because all three associate organic with quality. although, all three are increasingly aware that organic doesn't always mean quality, especially the "first movers." they are, as i understand it, a sort of leading edge consumer. this way, companies who buy firstmove's study can anticipate market trends and try to provide accordingly.

reading this, naturally got me thinking. wondering if we are "first movers" in our market. when i look at what i'm putting on the belt at the grocery store, i feel like i must be, but am i not at the mercy of the purchasing dude at the grocery store and what s/he makes available to me? it's the old chicken or the egg, isn't it? do i make the choices i do because they're what's there or is it because i want that organic chicken, eggs, milk, yogurt that it's there? how does this really work? who is really in the driver's seat?

there is a lot more talk about organic food and locally-produced food in the air these days. books like barbara kingsolver's wonderful animal, vegetable, miracle and all kinds of companies who will deliver you a box of organic, locally produced veg on a weekly basis, more and more organically-produced wines and olive oils on the shelves. all of which indicates a trend towards more awareness of our food supply. and it's about time too!

but, from what i can see as i look around in the grocery store, there are far too many people who haven't gotten the message. i see people piling on sodas and chips and ready-made meals (which were practically non-existent when i came to denmark ten years ago). and i find myself silently judging them. and feeling decidedly superior as i put fresh tomatoes and cucumbers and radishes and cabbages and mushrooms and organic ground beef and an organic chicken in my basket. i will actually skip the milk or go to another store to get it if my usual store is out of organic milk. i don't really want any other milk in my refrigerator or in my family. i even know which gas station always has organic milk and bike out of my way to get it if we're out of milk on a sunday morning.

we do decide who we want to be with the food choices we make--healthy, organic, local (supporting local farmers is always good), animal-conscious (only eggs from chickens that get to lead a proper chicken life), tree-hugging (i always take my own cloth bags), environmentally-conscious. at our house, we even make political choices--for example, avoiding produce from israel until they start being nice to the palestinians. granted, israel probably doesn't notice, but it makes us feel better. but eating foods that haven't had to travel halfway across the world in a 20-foot container (my livelihood aside) also TASTE better, so we're making a taste choice as well.  our time is precious, so the time we spend making food should be worth it, i definitely don't want to use bad quality ingredients.

anyway, back to this notion of calling oneself a "future researcher." what is up with all of these made-up professions? isn't it ok to simply be a researcher anymore? you have to inflate it with "future, " to make it seem trendy and cool? and speaking of trends, i've also seen the title "trend researcher." and i have also seen someone called an "idea consultant" in my newspaper. on that one, i contacted my sister immediately and said we should definitely start an idea consulting business. $100 for small ideas and $1000+ for really good ones. although we may have to up those prices what with the value of the dollar these days. because, of course, our ideas remain brilliant and valuable. :-) 

in my previous job, i was contacted by a woman who said she was a "podcasting consultant." i had a look at her website and it seemed that she simply made audio recordings as mp3s and put them on a website. i guess it was made a podcast by the fact of listening to it on an iPod. hmm, i have about 10 iPods myself, so i guess i could do up a set of business cards that say "iPod expert" or something like that. please, people. get real! and feed your family locally-produced organic food that you carry home in a cloth bag (preferably one you made of old jeans or something equally recycling-minded). :-)

ok, i'm done now. don't we all wish i was still having the blog blahs?

headlines

"Now I've finally become myself." --Danish Tour de France winner, Bjarne Riis

i'd like to know who you were before, bjarne, if you only just became yourself. apparently that guy who doped himself silly and won the tour de france (in 1996, when doping was still ok) or the guy who last year admitted all that doping wasn't the real bjarne riis. what is up with that? when do people become who they are? aren't you just who you are and what you do is come to terms with it somehow?

i think this is a problem today. newspapers and magazines scream at us every day that we have to find ourselves, follow our true path, not to mention telling us constantly how stressed we are. quite frankly, it's all making me feel a bit lost and stressed out.

i'd like to think that i am who i am and that i've been me all along, i don't have to do anything special to become me, i just already am. there may be things that i'm not that happy to admit--

• i procrastinate like crazy
• i don't get enough exercise
• that whole pageant thing in the early 90s
• on occasion i drink a bit too much white wine
• i have a tendency to lose myself in my work and forget about what's important (e.g. my family)
• i have mental blocks that are hard to overcome (like this thing where i don't post stuff i've made on etsy)
  

however, all of these things are a part of who i am. it may be that i should work with them, but that too is part of who i am. i may change my habits, but i don't actually change who i am. as much as i might not like to admit it, in the early 90s, i had platinum blonde hair and entered beauty pageants. would i do that today? no way. but, it is a part of who i am today that i did that.

we may evolve, but we don't suddenly become ourselves, we just already are.

* * *

in denmark there is no separation of church and state. in fact, there is a state church. the danish people's church, which is a brand of lutheran protestantism. you can choose to pay church tax or not and thus are a member or not a member of the church. although not religious at all, i do choose to pay the church tax, mostly because i find it amusing that there are several ministers who have said that they're not really that sure about the whole god thing and especially not the bit about jesus. i think it's pretty cool to have ministers who express human doubt in this way. plus, i'm happy to have my tax kroner go towards the upkeep of the beautiful and charming churches around the countryside.

however, in today's newspaper, they have come with a new proposal. they will hold divorce ceremonies in the churches. with 50%+ divorce rates, the danish church recognizes that there is a need for people to part ways with as much ceremony as they wed. interesting concept. there is something comforting about ritual, so perhaps they're onto something. i wonder if people will spend as much on a divorce party? and what do you wear to your divorce ceremony? a black dress? or red? or purple?

* * *

that's enough headlines for today. i have an electrician working in the house and he keeps turning off the power, so i'll get this posted while i can.

serenity now

i'm only on the first leg of my long journey to singapore. and so far, it's been a chain of frustrations:

1. typical righteous danish woman woman from the much longer Economy class/Non-Gold /Platinum line in CPH tries to butt into the Business/Gold/Platinum line because her line was taking too long. consider going postal for brief moment. luckily, the guy behind the counter turns her away.
2. pick security line inhabited by elderly people who are clearly traveling for the first time and have all of their gallon bottles of shampoo with and are bewildered as to why they're being taken away. again with the thoughts of going postal.
3. CPH airport, to my great sorrow, no longer has Hendrick's (best gin ever, loved by a small handful of people, all over the world).
4. queue at starbucks in kastrup airport far too long to obtain much needed grande chai latte before flight to amsterdam.
5. nose and sinuses totally and completely stuffed up during entire flight, severely restricting ability to breathe! brain clearly in need of all the oxygen it can get.
6. singularly unhelpful woman at the counter in KLM lounge near F gates causes me to want to scream, but instead i lower voice an octave and go into patronizing mode [strangely this does not help]- understand for a brief moment why people totally go postal.
7. old woman offloaded from wheelchair and deposited in seat next to me is wearing what can only be an entire bottle of truly offensive perfume. stuffed up nose chooses THIS moment to clear.

on the bright side, things can only get better from here, right?

danish service culture

ha! that's the most ironic title i've ever typed on this blog. because there is a complete and utter absence of service culture in denmark. and i've just had TWO run-ins with it inside of 20 minutes. why, after ten years am i surprised, you ask? good question. i'm not sure why i am either. but this one, especially the second instance, totally blind-sided me. and when the lack of common courtesy and even a modicum of service hits me in this country, it hits me hard. i suppose because no matter how long i live outside of the u.s., my inner american thinks that when i'm a customer somewhere i could expect service. and in these instances, i wasn't even asking for SPECIAL service, just normal, ordinary common courtesy kind of service. but did i get it? no, i did not.

instance 1: this morning, when i left the house for my painting lesson, i suspected that a package would be arriving today. so, i left a note on the door, asking said post person to leave the package by the door and take my note as signed permission to do so. when i got home, there was my pink posh yarn envelope by the door, so i thought it had worked. so, imagine my surprise when i opened the mailbox and found a slip to collect a package at the post office. (tomorrow, as i later found out.) what the X*#? how could that be when i left a clear note--even written in danish--on the door.

so, stupid me, not actually noticing that it was actually tomorrow i could pick it up, i go to the post office, thinking i could get it today. i handed the note to the woman behind the counter and she glances at it and righteously throws it back to me, telling me that it won't be there 'til tomorrow. i could have dealt with that, but she was so righteous and sort of "ha!" about it. so i said that i wondered how it could have happened when i left the note. she continued in her righteous tone to inform me that that's not allowed. i walked away, shaking my head and muttering something about there not being much service from the postal service...

that i could, in some sense accept. although she didn't need to be so righteous. why do danish women always have to be so righteous?

instance 2: at the cashier in kvickly. he says my total is 800-something. that sounded really, really high, tho' i was purchasing cider--both alcoholic and non-alcoholic and tonic and schweppes lemon and such things. still, it sounded high, so i had a look when i got my receipt. and there, on the receipt, i saw that i was charged for 39 packages of butter, rather than the 3 that i actually bought. i called it to the attention of the cashier, who otherwise seemed to be a nice young man. he, without even THINKING of apologizing, asked me to go over to customer service and have it fixed. i, reeling from the shock of NO APOLOGY(on top of my righteous-woman-at-the-post-office experience), i began muttering about it and got a small apology, but only after i had to ask for it. i went to the customer service counter. still reeling. and still muttering about the lack of apology, admitting that maybe my sensitivity about it was due to my being american. which the kid behind the counter confirmed...that american culture was totally different in that way. which was not all that helpful.

so, all told, i was left reeling and yes, seething, from the entire experience. what is it? why is it so difficult to be polite? my theory is that danes give so much in taxes that they think they don't owe other people anything...no recognition that they exist, no acts of human kindness. nothing. and at times, it's a hurtful and bewildering way to live. if you're not a dane.

what is the world coming to?

my newspaper today has a special section on "business courses." featured in 30x30 format, is a giant picture of a guy who is supposedly diving his way to better leadership. (yes, you read that correctly. diving.) he's learning to control his breath and thereby his management skills. what? are people really buying this? is this some kind of a joke? sadly. i fear it is not. where is the critical journalism today? who could have seen this ridiculous idea and said, hey, "let's devote a cover and two whole pages inside to this completely absurd idea." or maybe they're just seeing how far they go before people say, "stop." but i fear that no one is saying "stop." people are apparently so desperate for something to grab onto that they think, "hey, if i could just breathe, i would be a better manager, i need to go on that course." why not just be good at your job? why not just surround yourself with good people, listen to them and then make decisions based on your own common sense. why do people need some kind of lifeline to hold onto? is it because everyone has a manager title today, including the garbage man? are we really so insecure? is it because religion has faded? do we really have so little to believe in? is there such an innate drive to believe in SOMETHING in us that we grab at completely ridiculous straws such as this? i think it's a worrying trend but i'm at a loss as what to do about it. just wait for the latest management trend to be stability, stability, stability as opposed to constant change. maybe that would make everyone feel more secure.