goodbye poppelvej (that rhymes, you know)

literally my very last shot of the old house. it's empty now (aside from that smeg stove and refrigerator (shh, don't mention the war....i think i mentioned it once but got away with it...)), but a new family will move in already tomorrow. and so we can begin on the next steps....

...it'll be interesting to see where they carry us....

looking back

when sabin was little:

: : she had the cutest little red cowboy boots with silver-tipped toes.

: : she called hippopotamus (we had a lot of those in our sandra boynton books) "hillaponsa"

: : all the people she drew had flowers for heads.

: : she once ate her weight in those tiny little shrimp that take forever to peel (fjordrejer) and then asked for more.

: : she stayed with her cousins in the US and kept asking for "min mor og min far" and nobody knew what she was talking about, so they took her to see a big old fat hog on the farm next door.

: :  told the neighbors that she was 100% danish, but also half swedish and half american (that may have been only a week or so ago).

: : was more snowsuit than child when bundled up for cold weather.

next steps

i didn't really think that much about how i'd feel when the house was sold. and although the paperwork isn't all signed and agreed, we have an offer and it looks like we can agree to it. so it seems that for all intents and purposes, it is sold. and i feel at once excited and happy and eager and a bit sad and wistful. and wondering how it will all fall into place.

it seems that newly white hallway did the trick.

* * *

strangely, my iMac went all weird this evening and i'm in the midst a total reinstall. thank goodness for backups on the Time Capsule. tho' i'll lose the photos from the past couple days, since i turned off the backup three days ago, when i was tired of the noise one day. not sure what went wrong, but i'm hopeful that all will be well when the reinstall is complete. lesson 1: back up your computer! lesson 2: make sure you have a macbook pro along with your iMac so you're never computerless. :-)

checking out the neighborhood

this enormous sculpture stands at the end of the road which leads away from one of the farms we're looking at. i made husband stop so i could snap a few pictures with the zoom lens from a distance. it stands in all its strangeness on a little hill, with a small shack beside it. i didn't realize it 'til i got the photos home on the computer, but if you look closely down in front just outside that rope that's fencing off the sculpture, there are many little plastic dolls arranged in strange ceremonial homage in the grass.

and just as i was wondering what on earth it was all about, i opened my local newspaper and there was a story about the place. it was done twenty some years ago by an artist named edwin westergren. a swede by birth, he was adopted or at least raised by a family in denmark and ended up on a farm near the large sculpture, making his art. his sons live on the place now, among the now rather overgrown remnants of his sculpture. one son, who looks to be an older man himself from the pictures in the paper, goes around to kindergartens with his soulmate (his words), spreading the joy of native american music to children. as one does if one is an older danish man from the quiet side of the fjord.

it appears we could be moving to an interesting and rather colorful neighborhood. we're taking our favorite polish carpenter (who we would still like to adopt) with us to look at it this weekend, so we're getting closer. we'll just have to hope those people looking at our house this weekend appreciate the new, clean, white, no longer red or artistically balkan, pristine hallway (don't worry, it'll be done by the time they come on sunday). we did leave the maps on the ceiling. we have to have something that's us in this place, we do, after all, live here.

back later with my first week of calendar art journaling and how it's going on that simplicity project. and do be sure to check out the blog camp 365 pool on flickr. it's going very well! and it's not too late for you to join in!

people lack imagination

preemptive apology for blurry pictures. these were taken at 3:45 p.m. and as you can see in the window reflected in the mirror, it's already pretty dark outside. and we know that i refuse to use flash. or a tripod. but i think you'll get the idea anyway...

we met with our real estate agent today for a status meeting. he had some analytics on the hits the house has had on the website. it's been viewed 896 times in the 42 days it's been for sale. six couples have looked at it, so an average of one per week. he says those numbers are unbelievably good. i would like to have looked behind the hits to see how many of them came from all of you guys and my droning on about it here on the blog, but i didn't want to be too much of a web nerd, not in that context.

we talked about what we could do to make it better when people come to view it. and he mentioned that several people had commented on the missing plaster on the bricks in the hallway. i burst out laughing. because it is so obviously missing intentionally and obvious that we've carefully painted up to the edges. because that's how we WANTED it to look. rustic. maybe a little mediterranean or at the very least balkan. but he said that 3 of the couples who had looked at it expressed grave misgivings about plaster that wasn't staying in place. and i wondered, do people really truly lack imagination to that level? and apparently the answer is yes. half of the people who have looked at the house have proven they have a limited imagination. why am i surprised?

a time warp

i'm thinking of chickens and eggs and which comes first and putting all of one's eggs in one basket and all of those egg-related clichés. 

we've been house-hunting this weekend. we haven't sold our house yet (we're not worried, it will sell and it's being viewed regularly, so no problem there). we don't want to buy another house before selling this one - we've heard far too many horror stories of people who did that and sat with two mortgages for far too long and we're not going to put ourselves into that situation. so maybe it's silly to look at houses, because what if you fall in love with one and then it sells before you sell yours and you have to look all over again? and you always think "what if?" about that house that becomes ever more perfect in your mind, for being out of reach?

on the other hand, if you look at houses, you know what's out there and you get a better idea about what you like and what you want. we looked at 3 places this weekend. one of them, we'd really like to have. we looked at it before and they've actually even just lowered the price. it has a lot of promise and we think it might be The One. we looked at two others. one that is enormous and has a lot of potential, but was also likely to be a complete money pit. the last one we looked at wasn't the house for us, not at all, but i'm very glad we looked at it.

the house is owned by an elderly widow who lived there since the early 50s. her husband, who died 7-8 years ago, was swiss, so there was definitely a whiff of the swiss chalet over the place, with small curlycues around the wooden door frames and phrases in german etched in wood hung here and there on the house. i didn't have my camera with me, as it was again a dark and rainy day, but i don't think it would have felt right to snap pictures anyway, not with her there, weeding and digging in the garden despite the rain and the fact that she must have been well into her 80s. you can see some pictures here on the website, but they have clearly done a major photoshop job on these, as it's never been that light in this house. ever.

the house was like stepping inside a time machine. they had decorated way back when they moved in and then the clock stopped. heavy wooden furniture, dark wallpaper, maidenly twin beds in the bedrooms, a lace-topped baby grand piano with a complicated piece with a german title laying open, low ceilings, vaulted walls, small colored-glass windows. it was like a museum, with both the objects of a museum and the hush and that musty, old smell of ancient books and linens.

stepping back outside, i had to shake my head to bring myself back to 2009. it really felt like entering a time warp. and that was both fascinating and a bit sorrowful. it was so strange to think of an entire lifetime lived in that house, being held there between those walls, preserved, an imprint of time. surely there were memories layered there in the books on the shelves and doilies on the elaborately carved, very upright couches. hints of an earlier time and an earlier sensibility - one both accessible there and yet incomprehensible in some sense.

i wonder if one day someone will look at our house and think the same? will we stand still like that? how does that happen? is it a question of money? or stubbornness? or lack of awareness? what is it? the lady seemed very tough and spry, out in her wellies, doing hard labor in the garden on a rainy sunday. i both admired her and felt resentment radiating off of her. she must have been sad to be facing that she could no longer take care of such a large place, its barns full of beautiful old horse-drawn vehicles and chickens and the detritus of more than fifty years. it must have been hard for her to see people traipsing through her house, trampling her memories with those blue protective plastic covers on their shoes. it made me feel sad and yet i also indulged some of the strangely attractive kitsch that is nostalgia. nostalgia for something which i never experienced, but which was obvious there in the very fibers of the place. i wonder how many of her memories would echo there in those walls, long after she was gone. does a life lived so long in one place leave a heavy imprint that cannot be erased?

such heavy thoughts on a rainy, grey day. so i lightened my mood (and hers), by buying fresh eggs from her, a whole tray of them. and she smiled at me when i told her i wanted some eggs and for just a second, i think it was ok for her that people were looking at her house.

it's all about the horses

it seems like a few people were rather surprised by the "preparing the house for sale" post yesterday, so i thought i'd explain. a number of months ago, husband and i began talking about what we could do to change the way we live...to live closer to nature, to eat more locally, to have a bigger garden, to generally behave towards the planet in a kinder, gentler manner. in this connection, we began imagining buying a big farm place with enough space for at least one other family and we even did some of our thinking through writing over here.

well, things have progressed faster than i imagined. we were serious about this from the beginning, but in my mind, it was several years away. but then we began to ask ourselves why it should be. why wait? and we started to look at places with potential. places which have room for a big garden and room for a horse (or two). and we found out that they're out there and they're even affordable. and although we don't have the bit sorted out about sharing it with another family, the possibilities are there.

so, since we have to sell our house before we can buy one (or that's what we should do anyway, to be prudent), we've decided to put it up for sale and see what happens. right now, in our area, houses are taking an average of seven months to sell, so it's likely that this sale isn't just around the corner. which is actually quite all right with me, because i love this house and all we've done to it and i love my blue room (which will be recreated in some even more fabulous form at the new house) and to be honest, i haven't really had enough time with it yet.

but sometimes, you have to follow your instincts and your heart. and it feels right to move in this direction. i grew up with horses and sabin began riding back in february (you can see lots of pictures of that here). she's a natural talent and i want her to have a horse too. of course, you can have a horse and board it at stable, but that's not what we want. we want our own place with our own horse(s).  and maybe a few chickens so we can have eggs. and a big garden. and maybe a little café/craft shop, where you can have a coffee and learn to make a quilt or take an art journal course or buy some really special fabric that's not easy to get other places (see, B, we are thinking along the same lines).

and because writing is the new praying, it seems to all be happening...but i do think i'll schedule a couple more blog camp dates so we take full advantage of the blue room before it's gone, at least in its current incarnation, so do stay tuned for that announcement in the near future...

* * *

just another note to clear up some confusion...we live in denmark. i work in norway. and husband is half-swedish. :-) does that make things any clearer?

stress!!!

i am here to report that it's very stressful to sell your house. or actually, to get ready to sell your house. you find yourself watching your husband doing all sorts of things that should have been done ages ago--painting those closet doors, finishing up the baseboards, pudsing the outside of the house (like stucco without the swirly frosting-like look--it just covers up the bricks), painting all that 70s brown wood on the outside of the house black, cleaning like mad (or having the cleaning girls clean like mad while you tidy like mad), trying to keep the kids entertained and from making too much of a big mess, baking gingerbread, lighting candles, making a new table runner (because you felt you must for the photos).

and then, the photographer (whom the realty company made you use) shows up two hours before you expect her and she wants drawings of the house and you can't find what husband has done with those notebooks of the drawings and you try to call him 15 times, but his phone is on silent, so you not so silently take his name in vain while you frantically try to locate the friggin' drawings with visions of his blood satisfyingly splattered on the walls above his desk swarming in your head. and the guy who makes the report on the house is here too and he's asking you to make copies of things. and you just want to get the studio ready for photos after three girls made new plushies creatures all weekend.

which turned out very well, but left a sea of bits of fabric in their wake. and you thought you had 'til noon to get it ready, so you were really, really surprised to find the photographer, who incidentally, has a canon (insert huge sigh here), at your door at 10. and you're not sure about the angles she's taking and she won't really listen to you as to what the best angles are in YOUR blue room and it seems she doesn't really want to take more than 1 picture of each room, which you think is really pretty poor considering the small fortune (equivalent of 3 50mm 1:4 nikkor lenses) you are paying her to take these photos of your house with her friggin' copy machine.

#77 - reversible table runner

all you can say is that they'd better be better than your own photos or you are definitely going to be filling that grudge book that spud gave you. because you already devoted several pages to husband and his lack of answering his phone and telling you the wrong time for the photographer lady. and in fact, you actually told him when he got home that you were breaking up with him. at least 'til 4, when you're going to meet him at tivoli.