the highlights

the folks are now safely back at home, no doubt enjoying their microwave (it was a source of constant irritation to them that we didn't have one and moreover don't even want one), newspapers in english (we had lots of newspapers around, but all were danish), weak coffee (i constantly made it with too much sock to it in my french press), proper spatulas (for scraping the dough off the sides of the bowl--it's true ours are strangely hard and unhandy) and just generally being back in their own home again, rather than surrounded by the mysteries and frustrations of another country.

because i love lists, here are a few of the highlights:

1. discovering that grandma can make that whistling sound with a blade of grass between her thumbs.
2. sabin learning to hunt for 4- (and 5- and 6-) leaf clovers with grandma.
3. walks in the autumn sunshine.
4. a simple meal of different kinds of cheese, sausage and good bread eaten together outdoors with good friends.
5. great conversation on american politics over said meal.
6. mom and dad cleaned all of the windows of our house, inside and out. turns out our view is pretty good!  who knew?
7. hunting mushrooms in the woods at buresø.
8. mom making apple bars out of apples from our own tree.
9. mom's help in finishing the edges of the patchwork.
10. lots of laughter over funny stories.
11. sabin playing tennis and golf and bowling and boxing on the Wii with her grandfather (and beating him!).
12. sabin saying, "don't think of it in dollars, think of it like it is," which was a pretty astute comment.

it was a good visit and i'm very glad they came. but it made me realize that we're in transition. i'm in my 40s now and have to face that my parents are getting older. it's strange for me to see my vital and active mother walking slowly because her knee and her heel bother her. my dad seems now like a bit of a fussy eater (or maybe he always was and i never really noticed). but having them visit and see our home and meet our friends and have a little window into our life here was a very good thing.

roast piggy

at our party last saturday, we asked the caterer to roast a whole (small) pig. it looked like this when they began:

and also like this:

and after four hours inside of the big grill with the lid closed, it looked like this:

unfortunately, there is no picture that does justice to how it tasted.

yummy.

my parents depart for home tomorrow, so more catch-up posts this weekend.

pretty patchwork art

at the eleventh hour, just after the first guests arrived (some were early!!! such bad manners!!), we hung the fabulous patchwork curtain from skinny laminx. my dear mother worked all morning, battling my old thrifted husqvarna sewing machine to hem the edges and make pockets top and bottom so we could hang it. we managed to find a black rod in ikea that works pretty well with it. there's another rod in the bottom pocket, so you can fold it up as well.

there are spaces at the edges because of the way the bracket it hangs on has to be attached to the wall. it has the feel of a large canvas artwork that i had hoped it would have. the colors are perfect for the very white room and it lends a warmth and homeyness to soften the stark white. 

when you're sitting at the dining table, looking up at it, this is the view:

and from above, it lets plenty of light through and has an almost stained-glass effect with the sun shining through. it's all i had hoped and even more.  thank you so much, heather, for your fabulous creativity!!!

p.s. the party was a big success.

arrivals!

midmorning this morning, the fabulousity arrived:

the wonderful patchwork that heather made and sent to me from cape town (one of my favorite places on the planet!)

look, it actually has matryoshka on it! i love those!!

and a mere few hours later, my parents and sister arrived as well. strangely, i totally failed to photograph that, but we have had a wonderful time catching up, laughing and eating good food. this is gonna be a great week!

6 meters of books

what do six meters of books look like?  pretty much like this:

but there are still about 3 boxes of books yet to unpack. must build library building next.

the road to hell..

...is paved with good intentions.

and as the party looms before us, i can see all of my monday good intentions going out the window.

i'm now thinking things like:

1. it's ok if the real floor isn't in the writing house and if the walls aren't painted.
   
2. where can we stash boxes of crap out of sight because there's no time to sort through them and put them away?
3. should we just take them to the dump since we haven't used them for a year anyway and didn't really miss them?
4. my sister can help me take all those bottles to recycling when she gets here.
   
5. mom can make the bread.
6. and the sauce.
7. do we really need to paint the doorframes one more time?
8. cushions? who needs cushions?
9. will anyone appreciate that i ironed the tea towels?
10. why did i use precious time ironing tea towels?

do you think the guests would mind if we ask them to paint?

a day i'll never have back...

this was one of those days...so full of promise, so much time stretching before me and so utterly wasted.

you know the kind of days where you go from task to task, doing a little of something here and little of something there, but finishing nothing. you drive to ikea. you find the stuff. although you are very focused (this is, after all, your SIXTH trip in 10 days), it still takes forever--mostly because you are unable to shed the cultural and societal pressure of following those damn arrows through in the right direction, not to mention the irresistible call of the meatballs. the line is long but that doesn't really matter because you have the world's worst queueing karma anyway, the cashier is slow and then a little suspicious when your addled brain accidentally tells him you have twelve shelf brackets when you really have fourteen. despite this, it still occurs to you that maybe it would have been easier to just move into ikea. because if you lived there, you wouldn't really have to worry about the check-out. plus, everything is so pretty! and very swedish! ;-)

on the drive home, the meatballs let you down and you crash hard (not literally, but almost), feeling very, very sleepy, so you have no motivation whatsoever to pick up any of the million tasks you were working on (lining drawers, hanging pictures, arranging books) before you embarked on the ikea mission. and then you have to take husband's oldest child, who is suddenly mad for bonsai trees to the plant school where you needed to go anyway to get dirt to repot the very tall palm tree you bought for the addition in ikea. you drag yourself through this as though there is lead in your shoes.

you make a coffee. it doesn't really help. you go into the dining room where you see that husband has actually removed a bunch of the books you so carefully arranged yesterday and you try not to cry because he is just trying to get the new shelves in place correctly. but it seems a little overwhelming. they send you to get pizza for dinner because let's face it, you're not in the frame of mind to make any dinner. then you remember that you have a parents' meeting at the school this evening. so you know that this day is now completely a wash-out.

the first bit of the parents' meeting is good--it's interesting to hear what the teachers have to say. they give an overview of what's on the agenda for second grade, aside from some worrying statements about a subject called "christianity," you think it sounds pretty ok. you spend a few minutes having a conversation with yourself in your head, reminding you that they have such a subject in a country where there is a state church rather than a separation of church and state. you make mental note (and actual note in little black book) to discuss the subject with sabin and encourage in her a healthy skepticism.

your mental reverie wanders to the difference between the two second grade teachers. one is a traditional teacher-type--a little bit hippie-agtig (that's one of those danish words that's just better than "ish") in clothes she made out of hemp fibers she wove and dyed herself (or so you imagine--it is your reverie, after all). the other in a tailored white blouse, smart jeans and an expensive haircut--still looking every bit the lead stewardess flight attendant she was before she became a teacher.  you're a little bit glad that your teacher is the former flight attendant. she looks like someone who belongs in business class and seems like someone who would keep a cool head in an emergency. tho', of course, you hope there aren't any of those in the second grade.

then, the meeting breaks into the two classes and out comes the cake and coffee.  you gaze around the room. these public institutions are very alike--they have curtains of a certain pattern that can only be called offentlig and they all have designer arne jacobsen chairs. you try to focus, but it's a lot of talk of planning obsessively some picnic tour next may. that's may 2009. you have difficulty focusing on such discussion as you have no idea what you'll fancy doing tomorrow, let alone may 2009. you can't commit to that date.  you think, wow, this discussion is really danish. is there no viking spirit left in these people? the vikings surely didn't obsessively plan the raping and pillaging months and months ahead. they just packed up the boats and rowed away when the wind was right.

then came the great risengrød discussion (it's a christmasy rice porridge) and for the past two years, we've had an evening where we all eat it together and make christmas decor. i think we may have decided to do it again, but by then i was heavily into fox-like thoughts of chewing off my own arm in attempt to escape.

then there was the great homework discussion, during which it transpired that there wasn't really too much homework, but the kid of the one who brought it up was just really, really slow.

i amused myself by going around the room and making a mental note of which newspaper each person/couple was. i have a theory that you can tell by looking at people, especially danes, what newspaper they read. there were 2 politiken couples, one jyllands-posten, possibly 2 berlingske (including myself), no information (unless i include myself again and it doesn't really count because it's my auxiliary backup newspaper) and the rest (read: overwhelming majority) were either BT or extrabladet, which are arguably NOT newspapers at all. i told myself that this internal dialogue was anthropological in nature and definitely not elitist snob in nature. but by then my brain was mush and i might be a little bit wrong about that.

anyway. tomorrow is another day and the new version of my list, while still long, shall be done tomorrow. wish me luck!