10 years

Ten years ago today I arrived in Sweden together with five cats, a large dog, and my best friend (at the time). My husband had already been here since June trying to get the house into a livable condition and building a quarantine for the animals in the barn. We had bought the farm over the internet. My husband's mother and her parents checked the place out and liked it, though they did say it needed some work. In retrospect, we should have taken the bank's advice when they offered to recommend a good demolition firm, but that's a long story in itself.

The trip itself was absolutely grueling, 29 hours door to door. There were all sorts of airline hassles because we were traveling with animals. Once in Sweden, the animals had to be checked out by the county vet and interred in the quarantine for 4 months. They were miserable, we were miserable, and of course, it was raining. The summer of 1998 is known as the summer that rained away because there really wasn't any summer weather--it went directly from spring to fall. Going from the San Diego summer to the Scanian fall was traumatic to say the least. My friend and I were to run the quarantine (with it's plethora of ridiculous rules) and go to community college to learn Swedish. Running the quarantine was a lot more than just taking care of the animals. We also had to burn the waste. This meant going to the forest to collect wood for the fire, and if you think dog poo and used cat litter are better for putting out a fire than keeping one going, you're right. And then there's the smell--let's not even go there. So after four months in quarantine and two more months in house arrest, my friend took her three cats and moved to Norway with a guy she met on the internet. We had been driving each other nuts since I moved in with her in June, so that was the end of our 11 year friendship.

That first fall and winter was probably the low point of my life. I was cold, damp, dark, and more alone than I could ever imagine even though my husband worked from home. The darkness and silence were unnerving. This was when I discovered I have tinnitus (ringing in my ears) and some hearing loss at a certain frequency. Eventually I did learn the language and made friends with some other foreigners. Now I think I'm beginning to make friends with some of the locals too. It's amazing how far I've come.

Rain, Rain Go Away

It's rained pretty much every day now for the past two weeks. There was one day last week where it was dry enough to mow the lawn, but I really didn't feel like doing it because I was in the middle of putting together a wedding album. (That's something that's best done with as few interruptions as possible so I don't have to spend a lot of time looking back to see if I've used a picture already of a person has been included too often or not enough.) Even though we have a ride-on lawnmower, it still takes me 3 hours to mow the lawn. Anyway, the lawn's a jungle now, and I really wished I'd done it when I had the chance. When I finally do get to mow, I'll have to do it slower in order to get a decent cut, and that's even more mind numbing.

Today was one of those days where it rained consistently from a uniformly dark sky all day. Blah! It was the same last weekend also. Usually this is the time of year for showers. The type of weather where it's sunny and gorgeous one minute and dumping rain the next. Rainbow weather. Good for plants and bugs and frogs, but not so good for lawnmowers since the wet grass tends to get all clumped up inside.

The weather report always seems to predict better weather a couple days out, so when it doesn't materialize I'm always disappointed. You'd think I'd know better by now. So here's hoping for some sun, or at least more rainbows.



FOLLOWUP: I should have mentioned that I took this picture about 45 minutes from here as I was leaving a wedding I had photographed a couple weeks ago. Also, to answer a question, yes it is cooler when it rains. Of course heat is rarely a problem here. The last couple weeks the high temperatures have been under 20 C/68 F).

Stung

There's a first time for everything, and today I was stung by a wasp. I suppose it's pretty amazing that I've managed to go almost 40 years without being stung by a bee, wasp, hornet, or such. My policy has always been to remain calm and leave them alone, and they have left me alone. Until today.

I was dropping my daughter off at a friend's house when I felt something in my hair. It was rainy and windy, so a leaf would not have been improbable. There are tons of wasps this summer, but in this weather, I never would have guessed that I had a wasp in my hair. Well I did, and when I brushed it off, it stuck to my thumb stinging me. I felt stupid just watching it sting me, but I feared swatting it might get me injected with a bug juice as well, and that probably wouldn't be so good.

It hurt a bit at first, but the pain quickly intensified, and I was surprised how much it hurt. After a couple minutes, my entire hand was stiff and achy, and my thumb was purple and in agony! After a few more minutes, my whole hand was throbbing, and the pain had spread half way to my elbow. I thought this must be what getting bit by a snake feels like. After two hours, the pain began to subside, and after four hours, I could use my hand again. I now totally understand why my daughter screamed like a banshee and was inconsolable for an hour when she got stung on the lower leg last month. She now totally panics at the sight of a wasp. I wonder if I will be able to remain calm next time I encounter one.

Watching the Olympics

I must say I'm quite disappointed by the Swedish coverage of the Olympics. We have satellite TV, so we get two stations that are showing the Olympics, both government run. Unfortunately I realized only a few days ago that it was more than just one station. The other station is not listed in the TV guide, and you can only get it with cable/satellite. It's something like CSPAN in that it usually shows either the news in text format, very dry lectures, or parliament sessions. Since I don't have difficulty sleeping, I don't usually stop at this channel when channel surfing.

Anyway, a couple days ago I discovered them showing the semifinals of the synchronized swimming duets! There were no Swedes competing, but there was a Swedish judge, so the commentators compared her scoring to that of the other judges. Since I used to do synchro myself (very badly), I was thrilled to see it. I immediately started taping it so I could show it to my daughter. Unfortunately she wasn't particularly impressed. She was most interested in the costumes and music but watched for less than 10 minutes.

Yesterday I caught them showing the last half hour of the gymnastics exhibition, so I taped that too. Gymnastics is probably the highlight of the summer Olympics for me, and this was the first I'd seen of it this year, and both the mens and womens competitions were already over (I believe I still have a chance to catch some rhythmic gymnastics). This seemed really odd to me since gymnastics seemed to be a very popular spectator sport in the US, and it got a lot of air time. Perhaps Swedes are less interested in watching it because they're simply too tall to be that good at it. As it turns out, my daughter was much more interested in gymnastics than synchro.

In general I would describe the Swedish coverage as heavily biased towards soccer, handball, track & field, and various types of fighting (boxing, wrestling, tae kwon do, etc.) It seemed like they showed every match or heat regardless of who was participating (with the exception of race walking which I have not seen at all--it is considered track & field, isn't it?). Besides these sports, they would show Swedes competing in anything. It was kind of cool to see a little fencing, dressage, sailing, and rowing, but it's kind of weird to see the Swede getting eliminated in the quarter finals and then they don't show any more. It was also kind of weird to hear the commentator clearly rooting for the Germans when they were playing against the US in beach volleyball. I think Michael Phelps was the only non-Swede (or opponent of a Swede) to make the nightly prime-time summary, and I was lucky enough to see several of his races. They even had a special tribute clip after he won number 8. I guess if you're that amazing, it makes for good TV all over the world.

I Laughed Out Loud

There is absolutely no limit to what people blog about. Here's a link to one that really cracked me up.

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2008/08/gosh-kermit-i-think-id-get-that-looked.html

First Day of School

Monday was my daughter's first day of school. It's kindergarten, but it's a big deal since she's changing schools. She used to go to daycare/preschool at the local public school, but now she's starting at the Montessori school. She's very happy about this since many of her friends (who are a year older) already go to this school. At this school they have kindergarten, first, and second grades together in the same class with a total of 24 kids, 2 teachers, and one assistant. I am hoping that she will soon catch up with her older friends since kids start school a year later in Sweden than they do in the US, and I can't help feeling that she's behind.

When I dropped her off, all the other "new" kids stood together with their parents, and the parents were invited to come in for a while. I was prepared to do this, but Lina didn't want me to. I was almost a little disappointed, but I was not surprised. Of course she had a good time, but as usual, she didn't give us many details. She was proud to say that she helped to comfort the kids who were sad.

To top off the first day of school experience, she got sent home with a pile of paperwork and extra homework for Mommy. That's right, today she had to bring in pictures from her summer vacation for "show and tell." Luckily I'm only a couple of months behind when it comes to dealing with our personal pictures, so I able to print out about a dozen pictures for her.

A hole in the head

My husband needs another car like a hole in his head. We already have six. Not even two months ago I was celebrating that he finally got rid of one and a half cars (by half I refer to a carcass which has never been confused with a functional vehicle). Well, It didn't take long for the vacuum created by the absence of these cars to get the better of him, so last weekend he came home with this: a 1976 Cadillac Eldorado. The idea is that it will be a project for him to work on together with our daughter. This isn't quite as crazy as it seems since she actually has some mechanical aptitude and does like cars, Cadillacs in particular, and we do occasionally go cruising or to car shows. So while this car is hideously ugly at the moment, it does have the potential to be the ultimate cruising car. It is, after all, the last of the great land yachts.

Will the car be usable in time for next spring's cruising season? He thinks so, but I'm not going to hold my breath. The car that he recently sold was one that we bought eight years ago that was supposed to be my daily driver. It only needed a couple weeks work first....

It seems weird to be thinking about spring already, but summer is already drawing to a close. The local public pool closes on Sunday, then school starts on Monday. (My daughter's really excited and looking forward to starting kindergarten at a new school.) This time of year is called "late summer." The weather is unstable, and rain is frequent. Nights are distinctly cooler, and daytime highs are lower. Nights are dark enough to see stars already by the time we go to bed. As always, I'm hoping for a prolonged "Indian summer" and fearing that what I consider to be summer weather may already be done for the year. Sigh....

NOTE to my FLICKR friends: I've uploaded pictures of my daughter and her friends at the amusement park. If you're not on Flickr but would like to be or would like to see the pictures anyhow, just let me know.

Amusement 3 X 6 = 0

On Saturday I took my six-year-old Daughter and two of her friends to the local amusement park. I'd never been there before and didn't really know what to expect. I'd been planning on going last year, but like most Swedish amusement parks, it's only open in the summer, and by the time I got around to it, they had closed. Unfortunately the wonderful weather we'd been having last week didn't last, so it was relatively cold (upper 60's/18-20 C) and windy. This was especially disappointing since the highlight of this place was the water slides. I love water slides, but I hate freezing, so I was quite torn. As it turns out, the decision was made for me.

The two friends D chose to invite couldn't have been more different in temperament. One of them (S) was even more wild and adventurous than my own kid (I hardly believed that to be possible) while the other (K) was extremely cautious. D and S took off for the water slides while K paddled tentatively around one of the pools. A few minutes later D and S returned, announced that they were freezing, and said we should go warm up in the sauna (S knew about this since she'd been there before). 30 seconds later, K emerged and said she didn't like the sauna--she couldn't breathe. I was still trying to figure out what to do with all our stuff (no lockers), so K and I ended up sitting together and watching the stuff while D and S had a blast.

When rain seemed eminent, we dried off and went over to the rides. There were about a dozen carnival style portable rides set up along with a couple of inflatable jumping areas. One of the rides was clearly only for adventurous teenagers, and a few more were for toddlers. I'd been looking forward to roller coasters (maybe not Magic Mountain caliber), but the one roller coaster they had was so tame that after careful observation, K was convinced to go on it. The higher speed rides all involved spinning which I cannot handle. K was not about to try either. So D and S rode a marathon of teacups from hell while K and I waited. I tried to talk the kids into alternating between rides that they all could go on and the ones that only D and S liked, but that didn't always work so well. I'd had high hopes for the bumper cars, but it turned out that only D could drive. S and K couldn't seem to figure out the steering and the pedals and found the experience frustrating.

There were also some farm animals to look at, an obstacle course, and several old fashioned playgrounds in different themes. It's a shame they can't keep this part of the park open the rest of the year. Obviously people wouldn't be interested in paying the normal admission price for a playground, but then, the staffing needs and overhead would be minimal also.

By the time I dropped the kids off at home, I'd spent over 7 hours with them. D and S had a great time, and K claimed to have fun too. I got to know K a lot better and discovered that she's really an interesting child. She has keen powers of observation, and she's so conscientious with her things. The other girls would kick off their shoes and throw their sweaters as they ran, but if K took off her sweater, she immediately folded it and put it in her bag. I would never have thought a 6-year-old would even be capable of that. She's also the only 6-year-old I know who would ask if she had ketchup on her face, wipe and repeat until it was all gone.

So while it wasn't a particularly amusing day for me, I do consider it a positive experience. Next time, we'll only go if it's warm enough for water play, and we'll bring our own food and no more than one friend.