wordless wednesday - sabin's tree

t minus 36 hours and counting

the danes think christmas is the 24th, even tho' they do refer to it as christmas eve, as one should. they torture their children by making them wait all day, until after the food is consumed and the dishes put away before finally letting the sugar-crazed, zombie-tired little darlings tear into their gifts. imagine how much more peaceful the day would be if they just waited until actual christmas, let the kids open their gifts in the morning like normal people and then they had their new games and toys to play with all day while the adults cooked. you know, like the normal order of things.

at our house, we try to do a bit of both. it works out because sabin's big sisters come to our house on the 25th, which is actual christmas, and i save a stocking of small prezzies for sabin to have in the morning. we do our big christmas meal that day and just have a good soup of some sort - tho' not my mom's oyster stew because i can never find oysters 'til after christmas - and some good bread on the 24th.

nigella fruitcake #95

as of this moment (midmorning on december 23), the only tree we have up is the little lego tree pictured above. and as you can see, the presents don't really fit under it very well. i baked up a storm yesterday - making a beautiful and easy fruitcake from nigella's christmas cookbook, a couple of loaves of cranberry-orange bread (recipe coming soon to domestic sensualist) and a thyme focaccia. when i wasn't baking, i was playing outside in the snow with husband and sabin and her friend, so there was no time to put up the trees (one big one and a little one for sabin's room), which we went out and cut down on monday.

after seven nearly uninterrupted hours of playing in the snow yesterday, around 8, sabin began complaining of a stomach ache. her cheeks got rosey (not in a good way) and her eyes glassy.  her friend, who was going to stay overnight, reluctantly tore himself away from her computer and went home with his parents who had come by to inspect the fort and have a bit of hot apple cider and freshly-baked nigella fruitcake. it was a good thing he did, because she spent the entire night throwing up, then fitfully sleeping for a little while, then throwing up again. and it's no better this morning, tho' now her little tummy is empty, so there's not as much throwing up. what a way to spend christmas!

the simple things

beautiful christina at soul aperture is doing simple things wednesday once again....so here, i give you the simple things that are making me happy right here and now...

beautiful viking ships at sunset...

our pooka on the beach...

our pooka jumping on a rain-soaked trampoline...

the fearlessness of our pooka...

how friggin' strong the pooka is...

these two people:

my favorites in the world...
(not that they're simple)

i hope you'll play along too...

what are the simple things making you happy?

right.

this.

very.

minute.

in which she worries about the future

last night, we got home from playing cards with friends and started flipping through channels, as one does. we landed on an episode of law & order: SVU which featured a former IRA terrorist who had gone mercenary and was working for columbian drug lords since he was trained to kill and there wasn't so much killing to do anymore in ireland. so, very uplifting, as you might imagine, but a notch above the documentary on schools in germany which were training little super nazis in the years leading up to and during WWII that was on DR2.  during the commercials, husband was flipping to BBC world, where they were talking about years of strife in the congo on hardtalk. reminders of mubuto sese seko and laurent kabila and now his son flashed across the screen. why didn't i just walk away and curl up with mma ramotswe, you ask?

good question.

i sat watching these programs and i began to get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. i was glad sabin had fallen asleep and wasn't watching that kind of stuff. and the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach was for her sake. because sometimes i it makes me really ill to imagine the world she will inherit. what are we doing to our planet and ourselves? and are we just sitting here, letting it happen, as we watch it all unfold on t.v.?

there was a news recap on BBC during one of the breaks and they very dramatically and with a tone of indignation reported that russia had kicked out a couple of canadian diplomats from NATO offices in moscow. of course they did, that kind of thing happens all the time and the dudes were probably spies. which, if the editor choosing that story and the angle for that story had the slightest modicum of historical knowledge, would have been obvious. and then they would have realized it was actually really rather a non-story.

and this caused me to think of an article in information the other day about how few danish politicians (20%) think that studying the humanities (including history) is important. maybe i'm a bit touchier about this than most because i actually have a master's degree in humanities, but i think it's important to mankind's ability to sort out the world around us and make the right decisions. decisions of all kinds--but especially decisions relating to governing and how we treat one another and the planet (which cannot be done without governments cooperating). but we can't negotiate the waters as is necessary if we have no historical, sociological, cultural knowledge/background--all of which come from the humanities. it's good for us to read the classics and the so-called great books. it equips us with the necessary tools to think about things and sort them out and analyze and make good decisions. even editorial decisions like about whether it's a big deal or not that russia kicks out a couple of canadian diplomats.

and i worry that the world that sabin is inheriting isn't going to have people who are able to do that. i mean, if it's this bad now, how much worse will it get? where are the great thinkers today? the great ideas? the great philosophers? the great writers? as much as i respect and even like a guy like thomas friedman, who is arguably a public intellectual on the scene today, he's no kirkegaard. where are the people of that caliber today? where is today's dostoevsky? or voltaire? or byron? or thomas jefferson? where are the great men and women? instead we've got britain's got talent and madonna trying to adopt a kid in malawi and some asshole reporter asking some stupid football player what he thinks about climate change. we're asking all of the wrong people the wrong questions.

i want to shelter sabin from it, to keep that balloon before her face--so that what she knows is joy and laughter and all of the colorfulness there is in the world. but i know that balloon will rise and she'll have to face the mess we've left her with. and that just makes me feel sick to my stomach.

sorry for this uncharacteristically somber post, it's been grey and dreary all week and the world just gets me down sometimes.

a virtual adventure

a few weeks ago bloggy friend and fellow julie jules and i started a little project with our 8-year-old daughters. we call it trans-atlantic adventures in learning (cumbersome, i know--we're open to suggestions for a better name). the idea is for our two curious 8-year-olds to learn a bit about what it's like in another country.

sabin being half american but not growing up in the US makes me think she's missing out on certain things that i had growing up (and probably, let's face it, being protected from a whole lotta crap like overly-sweetened peanut butter), but for me, it's a chance for her to experience a bit of what it would be like to grow up in the US and to share her experience growing up in denmark. she loves it. she looks forward to checking her blog every evening and is very active in deciding what stories we tell on the blog.

the girls exchanged a soft little animal and are using the animals as a medium for telling some of the stories. when early, addie's robin, first got to denmark, he flew up in a tree and he played a little nintendo.  next, sabin wants to take early with her to riding lessons next saturday. early has also drawn himself a little nest which we need to photograph and post for addie to see. on addie's side, buller, the little lizard sabin sent has helped make dinner and gotten up to some mischief with the big giant statue of paul bunyan.

other than that, the girls have shared walks and favorite places, a typical school day and the outfits that they wear. we had a busy week last week and i was away (since i work in a different country), so we didn't keep taking a daily picture of what we're wearing, but we'll get back to it. we have a new feature this week--where the girls are photographed with a sign bearing a question and we'll answer the question with another photo of a sign with the answer. that will be fun.

it's really a kind of modern way of being penpals. all the more fun because it can be a daily thing with lots of interactivity. i remember waiting weeks for the next letter from my penpal when i was a kid. and best of all, it's already inspired another pair of girls to do something similar. and i think that's totally cool. come on over and check out what addie and sabin are doing this week. and if you feel similarly inspired and you have kids around the same age, leave a comment and we'll see if we can hook you up with someone who'd be interested in a similar project, just like jules did for mikaela and ashlyn.

earth mosaic 2009

it's earth day and there's a marvelous flickr group--earth mosaic 2009--that's collecting pictures taken on this day from all around the world. i just geotagged and submitted mine. shots taken right here in my little town in denmark on this glorious earth day.

i feel a rant coming on...

sabin's school has a parents' portal. it's one of those typically badly-designed, no usability studies conducted, homemade kind of unhandy, old-fashioned things, which isn't really what this post is about, but as i said in the title, i feel a rant coming on, so i shall indeed rant about everything.

yesterday on the parent portal, the school posted what i can only term a decree outlining their "principles for parental financial responsibility for damages." it reads as follows (in the original):

Hvis en elev bliver taget i, forsætlig at have forvoldt skade på skolens materiel, vil elevens forældre modtage en regning til betaling – efter endt reparation eller ombytning.

Når det er billigere for eleven og skolen, at servicepersonalet reparere materiellet, vil elevens forældre modtage en regning på 250 kr. pr påbegyndt time samt omkostninger til materialer.

Elevens forældre vil ikke modtage en regning, med mindre skolen er sikker på, at det er vedkommende, der er skyld i skaden.

Elevens forældre vil altid blive informeret i godt tid, inden der kommer en regning.

Forældrene orienteres inden arbejdet påbegyndes.

basically, it says that if your child causes damages to school property, you as a parent will receive a bill for the damages or replacement of said property. it further declares that if it is cheaper for the student and the school, the school's own service personnel will make the repairs and the parent will be billed for 250 kroner per hour + the cost of materials. it does allow one caveat that the parent will only receive a bill if the school is sure that the student in question caused the damages. and it also says that parents will be notified before work begins and before they are sent a bill. 

at the bottom of the word document, it says that the decision about this matter was taken at a school board meeting at the end of march. the document was simply put in the intranet with no accompanying explanation. and this is part of what i object to. i'm sure that there are extenuating circumstances which made the school think this was necessary, but none of those are given (perhaps if i were truly a resourcestærke forældre i would simply KNOW what the background story was). i cannot believe that i'm the only parent who would be interested in knowing the context of this decision and i would think that could be done diplomatically without naming names.


i think this is another example of how language manifests culture..i find it to be written in the same cold, righteous, distant manner that i sometimes find the entire culture to behave. it just hits me as very harshly put, even tho' if you dissect, there's not anything that's really wrong with it. maybe i feel this way because i'm missing the context for the decision.

or maybe the main reason that this is rubbing me the wrong way is that last week, sabin hurt herself when she fell on a wooden structure in the schoolyard that is in dangerous disrepair. i don't know if the hole she fell into was already there or if she actually made the hole in this wooden decking/bench structure that surrounds a tree in the schoolyard.  i had a look at the bench and counted no less than four places where there were jagged pieces of broken-off wood or holes where children could get hurt. it wasn't blocked off from kids playing on it until i brought sabin's injury to her teacher's attention (by which time it was already too late). i have to give her a big hand because she immediately acted and there is now tape up and the kids have been instructed not to play there. and look, the maintenance guy fixed it today--where the new boards are is where there were jagged edges, holes and dangerous protrubances (is that a word?):

this is the one where sabin fell in (before the repair).

but what i wonder now is if i will be presented with the bill? where does responsibility begin? if sabin had maliciously damaged the wooden structure, i would happily take responsibility. but, if she got hurt playing on something that should have been kept in good repair and it happened to break further when she was playing on it, should we have to pay? you might imagine that i do not think so. and i should hasten to add that no one has asked us to, these are just the thoughts that go through my mind as i read the proclamation.


i think it provokes me no end that parents are basically being threatened with having to pay for damages on school property when the school isn't even taking care to maintain it properly themselves. 

i was so incensed by this last evening that i couldn't sleep and i stayed up late composing an email to the school which i sent late last evening. it's now late afternoon here and do you think anyone has acknowledged my mail and my concerns? they have not. and do you think that's making me happy? it is not. 

there is a parents' meeting this evening and i am attending. the right people are probably not at this meeting, but you can bet i'm going to bring it up, even if i am painted ugly american for doing so. i just don't think it's acceptable to send out such a strongly worded statement with no accompanying background information, nor do i think it's appropriate to ignore my email. and most importantly, i don't think it's ok to let play areas become dangerous so that children are hurt on them during playtime. if it were the US, we could definitely sue over the injury sabin got on that broken decking. denmark isn't like that, but my litigious inner american has been awakened and she's not happy.

an alternative sleeping beauty

do you remember the story of sleeping beauty? i thought i did, but i didn't remember that it contained a whole lot of whispers from backstage and impatient toes peeking under the curtain:

and i don't really remember an abraham lincoln character.

but it did begin to vaguely ring a bell when they brought out a king and a queen who desperately wanted a baby.

it got a bit hazy again when a frog came out and promised them a little princess. i don't really remember a frog.

but then some good fairies came and made lovely promises of a happy life for the baby princess.

but, of course, there had to be an evil fairy too and she said the princess would die, which didn't really seem so bad because it all rhymed.

luckily, the blue fairy hadn't yet made her promise to the little princess and she said she wouldn't die she would just sleep for 100 years. and so she grew up and did exactly that.

and tall vines (which spoke in rhyme) grew up around her.

and they were quite hilarious when the prince came and chopped them down.

and despite looking positively american gothic, the prince and princess lived happily ever after.

and wild fun was had by all...

and now it's time for some beauty sleep around here.

just another mundane monday

turns out i was premature in my being pleasantly surprised by the efficiency of the fabric-softener scented washing machine repairman. you see, he fixed only one of the two problems and he left a totally NEW problem behind. which i didn't realize until after i did the first load. and naturally, they can't send someone back 'til thursday. grrr. crappy ass miele repairmen. actually, i have to give meile credit, now that i'm naming them by name, the girls on the customer service phone are great and you get to talk to a live person right away, rather than wading through some kind of automatic system and being directed to bangalore or bangulu as they're calling it now. i guess they just don't have very strict requirements as to whether you, as a washing machine repairman, have actually ever repaired a washing machine or might be capable of doing so.

then, around noon, husband called in a panic and asked me to bring him some clothing suitable for fencing. that took nearly two hours to locate said clothing (in dirty clothes pile since washing machine still not fixed) and drive it to him and get back home. note to self: ask husband more questions about what kind of course it is he's attending anyway....

and then i realized that although it was cloudy and dreary as hell in denmark, the sun was shining in sweden and that just seems unfair on so many levels--they've got nicer cars, more style, lower taxes, all the good names on the ikea stuff (the only stuff with danish names is insignificant stuff like bottle openers and the like) and now this:

after that run, it was time to pick up sabin. she did the absolute sweetest thing and completely restored my faith in humanity (which was waning in the face of extreme lack of sunshine) by filling a bag with all of her heinous bratz dolls and announcing that she wanted to take them to school the next day and give them to her friend aleyna, who is a girl from a turkish family (which somehow makes it even sweeter to me, tho' it shouldn't really matter). how cool is that?

and on top of it, she made a crown for the cat out of pipecleaners. i picture build-a-bear clothing on this cat's horizon:

i did very little that was on my list--my excuse being that the hardware store was out of the good firewood thingies so i couldn't warm up the studio without risking life and limb and of course, husband blowing a two hour hole into my day. and i made chicken for dinner--i found a package in the fridge and felt i had to use it up before it went bad, plus the child is a huge carnivore. but tomorrow is another day and we can be vegetarians then.

we are prepared to be radical

lynne shared this amazing you tube video with me this week. i find this house utterly mind-blowing and so inspiring. i seriously wish i'd seen this before we built all that we built in the past year. but somehow, it opens up my thinking even more than just about buildings--it seems to throw out all preconceived notions and just makes me want to rethink everything. i want to look at the world in an entirely new, fresh way. don't you love finding something that provokes you to think in that way?

* * *

report of yesterday's trip to the royal theatre in copenhagen:

far:  how was the theatre today, sabin?

sabin:  not good. all they did was mime and dance ballet. 

so much for giving the child a taste of "high" culture.

school is cool

sabin goes to a lovely old public school in the center of town. it's right across from the church and is comprised of solid old brick buildings. we like it a lot. her teacher, i've mentioned before, is a former long-time stewardess with SAS and rules the class of 20 second graders with the sure hand of a business class purser. they respect and like her very much.

the school has a general philosophy of working hard on socializing the children--no picking on the weak ones, speaking up if you're being picked on, doing activities that mix the kids up so they play with everyone and not just their best friends. it seems to work. on saturday, we observed sabin's best friend's class (he goes to a different school) and we could see a big difference--sabin's class is much more cohesive. a good teacher really matters and we are lucky sabin has that. the way it works here is that linda will follow the class all through their indskoling (in-schooling?) period, which i believe means through the third grade, so sabin has her at least one more year. it can be that she will follow them through the seventh grade, but that will be evaluated next year some time.

one of the very cool things about her class and her school is the outings they take. today, the class is going to copenhagen to a performance of fyrtøjet (the tinderbox)--a ballet based on a h.c. andersen story and with scenography and costumes by the danish queen. how cool is that? there are a few kids in sabin's class that i don't think would otherwise ever go to the royal theatre or see a performance that the queen was involved in. what a great experience and it's due to the initiative of sabin's teacher! we're really fortunate and happy that sabin has such a great teacher.

when sabin started kindergarden there was quite a lot of talk about resourcestærke forældre--parents strong in resources. that phrase has haunted me a little bit ever since i read it in a newsletter from the school. at first, i thought it was a rather cheeky comment about how much money people had, but it's not. it's more about how much energy you put into parenting. do you make a healthy, nutritious, exciting lunchbox for your child? does your child have the right books and her indoor shoes with her every day? does she do her homework? is her hair brushed? her teeth? are her clothes clean? does she have mittens with her? are her pencils sharpened? do her pens work? does she have those nice faber-castell colored pencils with the little bumplies on the side for a good grip? did she do her homework? does she get to school on time? do you spend hours and hours making her a fairy costume for the school play (and will you ever finish it)? do you make sure the child has good experiences that give her something to talk about when it's time to share what you did on your summer vacation? do you go to the pool with her on the weekend? do you read together? does she have a computer? a phone? a Wii? a DS? does she have all the accoutrements that it takes to be 8 years old and give you a feeling of belonging in today's world?

and i worry a bit about whether we're really very good at all of these things. her costume is half-finished and yes, she has the right stuff. her clothes are clean and she doesn't often have holes in her tights. husband is great at the homework side of things and making sure her bag contains the right books and sharpened pencils. he's steady at the lunch "packse," but she complains that his lunches are boring. because it gets boring and tough to come up with something exciting day in and day out. i stand there before it and admit it gets a little old, but it's something you simply have to find the energy for. and it's easier to find that energy when you know that the child loves school, has good friends and a good teacher.

so i think about finding that energy to be resourcestærke forældre and wonder if the goodness of school comes because we ARE that or if we are that because we think the school is good. which comes first? it's a circle, feeding itself, in a way.

and i do manage to get her to school on time, tho' very often i'm still in my pajamas when i run her over there. one day, i noticed that her reading book was lying on the stairs and i ran it over. i laughed to linda that i had to bring it over because we so wanted to be resourcestærke forældre. thankfully, linda assured me that we are. but i think it's something you have to work at constantly and the phrase itself really intimidates me. i'm just so insecure sometimes.

seige of leningrad?

i spent the better part of my morning cleaning sabin's room and it was such hard work that i have to share the "after" pictures here (i didn't have the heart to take "before" pix) if only to remember that it was once clean, since i doubt it will stay that way for long. it's not a huge room, but it is a very pink room, as you can see. still, she accumulated an astonishing amount of papers (most of them with drawings of varying quality on them) and other junk that took me nearly three hours to sort through and straighten up.

i felt motivated to do this because the rest of the house is clean and sparkly thanks to the wonderful sylvia, who comes and takes care of that every friday. it continues to astonish me how much energy it gives me that i have someone come to clean. if i'd known that, i'd totally have arranged for it years ago.

in amongst all of the candy wrappers and small stashes of leftover saturday candy, i found a lot of bowls and cups that i'd forgotten we even had. i also loaded up a big bag of old stuffed toys to take to the good will for some other lucky child. she's still got plenty, as you can see (the two giant bears from ikea--one of which once belonged to her big sister).

i had a lot of time to think about what causes her to be such a pack rat. she wants to save every single scrap of paper she's ever made a scribble on. it was so bad before i cleaned that the little window seat above was completely covered in papers and toys and she couldn't even use it. it's such a relief to have it tidied up now and i'm sure that she'll feel much better when she sees it too.

i found all kinds of caches of cookies and rice cakes and even an old petrified apple tart from a batch that i made last summer sometime. it's madness. was the child in the seige of leningrad in her last life and she feels driven to hoard food in her room? or is she just forgetful?

i think it's that she really loves her room and likes to spend time there and that means taking snacks up (which i'm going to issue a decree against) while she plays with lego or plays on her computer. and the past few days, i'm so proud of her, she's taken to writing stories in Pages, her word processing program. she even used photobooth to take a picture of a postcard and dropped that into her document. she has an innate ability with the computer that is breathtaking.

i'm just glad it's tidy for now. but i won't hold my breath for how long it lasts, but it seems a bit of spring cleaning feels quite good.

now you see it

saturday was snowy and icy and it was steadily snowing in the evening as we drove home from sabin's best friend's birthday party. then, it warmed up overnight and the snow is nearly gone now 24 hours later. what a difference a day makes!

* * *

and the creativity continued this weekend:

18.  felted soap. yes, you read that correctly. i felted a bar of soap for the upstairs bathroom with beautiful rovings bought last year in this etsy shop:

19.  and i also felted some stones that we collected on our winter beach trips during my sister's recent visit (more about that tomorrow):

i love how they look and even more how they feel, tho' husband and our best friends teased me mercilessly, especially when i took 78 pictures of them in different locations with different cameras and different lenses. there's just something special about the heaviness of the stone under all that wooly brightness.

i also made some fabulous bread, but didn't get to photograph it because it was devoured immediately. bread recipe over at just know where you are.

* * *

and on saturday, a whole lot of TtV photos:

hope you spent your weekend on something worthwhile.