failed to filch friday

it's a bit cloudy and rainy and even a little chilly and i wasn't feeling very inspired on a friday. so naturally, i went looking for something to filch.

instead of filching, i found something inspiring! and it involves using my gocco!

i'm going to participate in a gocco swap initiated by clothpaperstring. how cool is that?

you make 4-6 notecards and envelopes and send to those who are on your swap team! i'm so excited! i've not really tried this aspect of the blogosphere as of yet, but i think it's gonna be fun! there's still time to sign up 'til july 21, so if you have access to a gocco, go for it! :-)

buzzing

just because this was getting a bit wordy...

on working and motherhood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

all's well that ends well

last sunday, there was a strange vehicle parked in front of our house for a half an hour or so. it was strange because it had UK plates and i noticed it because i thought i saw a baby left alone in the vehicle and saw that the steering wheel was on the "wrong" side. (i know some of you consider "our" side to be the wrong side, but that's the stuff of another posting.) i realized quickly that there was a mom in the little silver SUV with the baby, so it wasn't a baby left alone, and i didn't really think any more about it.

i also heard our neighbor speaking english to someone. she's been having some landscaping work done in her garden and has had a number of different consultations with landscape architects and the like, so i didn't really think anything of it. 

she came by a little bit later and asked us if we'd seen the man she was talking to and whether we thought he looked trustworthy. we hadn't really seen him or paid that much attention, so we couldn't really say. she said he had offered to do some paving in her front yard for a very good price, but she didn't know what to think. she didn't really have the money for it and although it was just a smidge over half the price of what the other part of her garden had cost, she didn't think she would take him up on it.

we asked her if she'd received a written offer with all of the details outlined. she said she hadn't, but would ask for that before deciding. so, on monday morning at about 11, we were a little surprised to see a big yellow lorry pull up outside her house and 3 men jump down and get right to work tearing up her old paving slabs.

our neighbor ran out (luckily she happened to be home) and asked them what they were doing and demanded they stop, because she hadn't agreed to anything! the SUV guy pulled up and ended up giving an even better offer and sort of guilting her into the whole thing, as well as giving her a sort of written work order, so the work proceeded.

on monday, that 3-man team worked until nearly 10 p.m., doing all the hard work of tearing up old paving stones and throwing them into the lorry, digging and moving gravel and sand. all of it by hand, without gloves and without proper footwear and with worn-out looking equipment. all of them had extremely worn out shoes and clothing and two of the men looked quite old to be doing such physically-demanding work. none of them had that many of their original teeth left. in short, they were an extremely hard-working but sorry lot.

our neighbor has an extremely soft heart and this really began to bother her. she started to develop a bad feeling about the whole thing in the pit of her stomach. 

but, it wasn't until around 6 p.m. yesterday that that bad feeling proved true. suddenly, the young man came to the door and started in on some sob story as to how he needed her to pay him half of the money for the project, in cash, so that he could get the supplies to finish it the next day. 

that was never part of the original deal and when she said she couldn't possibly lay her hands on that cash at that time of day when the banks were closed, he got his boss on the phone. the ever-so-nice scottish gentleman from the silver SUV. he stopped being nice and lit into our neighbor, accusing her of all sort of totally absurd and ridiculous things...that she was a liar and wanted to cheat him. all of the accusations perfectly reflected what HE was doing to her! and because she is a kind and soft-hearted person, it was totally bewildering and very disturbing.

she came over and asked to talk to us about the whole thing. we talked it through with her. in the end, i made some dinner and we took it over and ate it together with her and stayed, talking the whole case through until nearly midnight. she clearly needed to talk it through.

we worked through all of the worst case scenarios. it was difficult to see what the trick was that this scottish guy is pulling. the guys, after all, were doing the work. our main thought was that he would get the guys to ask for half the money, then show up the next day and demand the whole amount, claiming to know nothing about his men having been paid.

the man completely refused to give a real name (he literally had so little imagination that he claimed his name was john smith, but we heard the workmen call him benny). after a little online research, i discovered that the phone numbers on the "invoice/offer" paper were prepaid phone card numbers and as such had no personal information. the company name on the paper doesn't exist. except for the fact that work is actually being done (and well, in actual fact), it would seem to be utterly and completely a scam.

we wondered if the three would show up this morning to finish the job. they did. and our neighbor agreed to pay the whole amount, in cash, to the workmen, once the job was finished. they said they'd be finished by noon. we agreed with our neighbor to come and witness the payment (since Mr. SUV also refused to provide a receipt), so that if he should claim he wasn't paid, there would be witnesses. we even enlisted our neighbors from the other side as witnesses--they're older and would look very good on the witness stand, should it ever come to that.

they weren't finished until almost dinner time. and we went over and witnessed the payment. our neighbor was able to convince the youngest of the workmen (who seemed to be in charge), to write, "paid in full" on the offer she had been given by Mr. SUV. she has some very well-done new paving in her front yard, at half the price it would normally cost and she has learned a valuable lesson about listening to that bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

and, i think we foiled whatever scam Mr. SUV was trying to pull, tho' i'm still not clear what it was. i do pity anyone else who gives this man business, tho'. it's an awfully strange way to do business...leaving your wife and baby in the car while you go door to door in a foreign country and bully people into work they're not really sure they want done.

on the bright side, however, it brought us closer to our neighbor, who is really a very nice, very good-hearted person. we were happy to be there for her the past couple of days. so it's true what they say, all's well that ends well.

lemon tree very pretty...

i'm not sure how it happened, but today, i was standing at the nursery, which in danish is called planteskole--"plant school" (which i find very charming) where i had actually gone to buy a lemon tree. i was thinking that the lemon tree i already have, which is blooming its little heart out, but never produces any lemons, needed a friend lemon tree. to commune and perhaps cross-pollinate with. 

but strangely, i found myself wandering the rose aisles. i think i may have mentioned here before that i'm not that fond of roses. i have even been heard to loudly declare that i don't like them at all. they're all spiky and pokey. they slyly try to lure you in with their lovely scent and appearance and then stick you as soon as they get the chance. 

but that was before i met:

paul cézanne

and ms. nostalgie

and ms. friesia

oh, yes, and ms. hanne

they all just begged to come home with me. and they even invited along their friend mr. westerland, but i forgot to take a picture of him. he's a bit of a climber. i think this might be tangobaby's fault. but i did get that lemon tree and the old lemon tree seems very grateful. they're just hanging out in the greenhouse, filling it with the lovely scent of their blossoms.

parallel lives

i have this feeling that i have a whole 'nother life going on in my dreams. like a parallel life to this one, featuring many of the same cast of characters, but in another setting completely. i say this because that setting is so often the same. and i'm often doing things that i do in my waking life as well. for example, i seem to spend a lot of time on airplanes in both places, tho' in my waking life the wings aren't sheared off as often as they are in my dreams.

there is especially one recurring location (other than an airplane) in my dream universe. and i hate to say it, but it's an enormous mall. and the parking structure of this mall, which is massive, has many stories and is very catacomb-like, figures rather heavily as well.

i realize it no doubt says a lot about me that my dream life takes place in a mall. (and that what it says may not be good.) but despite this, there is surprisingly little shopping going on there. there are, however, quite a lot of restaurants at this mall. maybe i go to bed hungry. or i eat dinner too late at night.

but the catacomb-like parking structure is very often the scene of the action. i'm either trying to find someone or someone is chasing me. the chasing thing hasn't happened much lately, so i must be more at ease in my waking life. there also used to be a lot more falling elevators than there is now.

many parts of the mall are totally deserted and dimly lit by a sort of mysterious blue lighting. they are always familiar to me and i can always find my way through these abandoned passages. often, i'm showing someone else the way through them. once in awhile in those otherwise abandoned areas, there's a still-open store full of quirky gifts--like spencer gifts in the US or that gadget store that used to be on Michigan Ave. close to (or maybe even part of) the Tribune building, but which i cannot for the life of me remember the name of at the moment (something with a german-sounding name?). 

in my dream life, i can fly, which is why i don't worry that much when the wings are sheared off the plane on approach for landing. the worst that happens is that my knees get scraped when some of the side of the plane is scraped back. and once, as i crawled out the hole left in the plane by an especially rough landing, i was rather surprised to discover that i was wearing roller blades. luckily, it all happened near that wonderful old-fashioned-style diner along I-80 before you get to the Quad Cities, so we could go get a coffee and a milkshake.

but now, it's late at night and my dream life awaits.

painting time is thinking time

i continue to paint the big drawer thingie (købmandsdisk--danish just has a better word for it!) in the kitchen and the slow, methodical work lends itself to thinking and flights of fancy. i think i'll be a bit sad when it's finished (which is soon) because i actually feel that the repetitive, not particularly creative act of brushing creamy white paint on wood has awakened inspiration within me at last. 

so many ideas are coming to me--writing ideas (something fun on great restaurants in out-of-the way places for scanorama), ideas for starting a creative "support group," so i have people to do creative stuff with (this means you, janni!), home decor (i'm thinking petroglyphs) and some ideas for more gocco notebooks (also thinking petroglyphs), new earrings, and yes, even scrapping! i printed a whole lot of pictures last night and made what i can only characterize as a breakthrough scrap page. (not because it was particularly good, but mostly because it's the first one i've made in months, despite continuing to buy supplies like there's no tomorrow.)

and although the desk looks a mess, it's just the kind of mess that i've been longing for...

ideas i had ages ago are returning to me...stamping cavafy's ithaca on the stairs is one of them. i'm also getting new ideas...a treasure map painting on a wall in the garden. small colorful tea-light holders hung all over the garden. bright print fabric pillows and cushions and tablecloths. 

all these months of gathering bits of inspiration and tacking them to the board beside my desk, seeking inspiration online and in magazine and books is finally paying off. i just had to give myself time to let the ideas gel.

if only a great name for my etsy shop would come to me, that's currently the obstacle that's stopping me on that front. perhaps it will tomorrow when i finish up the painting.

or perhaps it's all just paint fumes...