Putting the War in Wardrobe

Why does the New Year have to begin on January 1^st?  I think we should move it to April 1^st, get rid of April Fool’s Day (a stupid non-holiday only enjoyed by lame child-like men who find other people’s discomfort or distress amusing) and let the new year begin with the arrival of spring!

I bet more resolutions would be kept.  February was created just to ruin people’s best intentions of bettering themselves.  Valentines Day wreaks diets.  The dreary monotony of the weather ruins everything else.

Anyway, while I’ve been fighting to overcome the flu and a secondary infection (fancy words for shit-full-of-snot), I finally went though my wardrobes.  Yes, wardrobes plural.

The Danish Boy complained that I’ve gone through more clothes than he could possibly comprehend in the years that I’ve known him.

I told him that he was an idiot.

There was the skinny-chick wardrobe (wardrobe 1), that I had when we met, because I was unhealthily skinny when we first started dating, for a wide variety of reasons.  (None of them being the obvious ones.  I didn’t have an eating disorder or a body image issue, I was just a poor student who was in a bad relationship and I’m a comfort reader, not a comfort eater.)  Almost immediately I put on weight, bumping me up to normal weight and requiring a new wardrobe.  So that was wardrobe 2.  That wardrobe lasted until I got pregnant, 7 YEARS LATER.  Maternity clothing was wardrobe 3.  A woman’s body is permanently changed after giving birth, she simply does not go back to the way she was shaped, so I needed more clothing and that would be wardrobe number 4.

I pointed out that there are women who buy a new wardrobe EVERY YEAR.  I don’t think he believes me.  We even watched “Sex and the City: The Movie” (it was on TV, don’t get all excited) and he was all “don’t be silly, it’s a movie, women like that don’t exist in real life.”

Is there anything more frustrating than a man who doesn’t know how lucky he is?  I should switch from an Oreo cookie dependency to Manolo Blahniks.  (Although, let’s be honest, if it was a choice of overpriced footwear or more Oreo cookies… I’d say, pour me another glass of milk, good sir!)

ANYWAY.

I pulled all my pre-pregnancy clothes out of storage and went through them.  Out with the too small, the horrifically ugly (alas, I sometimes make huge fashion errors of judgment), and the seldom worn.  Some people might ask, “why get rid of something that you haven’t worn frequently?  Why not wear it more often?” and I would answer, “Because if I’m not wearing it regularly, it’s probably because I don’t like it and life is too short and my closet too small to keep clothing that I don’t wear.”  This doesn’t mean I got rid of *all* rarely worn outfits.  Obviously my wedding dress remains.  Fancy clothing gets a pass because it is a rare event when I get a chance to gussy up, but I’m not going to buy a new party dress ever time I have a party to go to.  Out went clothing that might-fit-if-I-just-lost-a-few-pounds, because who needs that shit?

Of course, in order to find out what fit, it meant a lot of trying on clothing.

The only thing more awful than trying on clothing is trying on clothing that you KNOW is going to be too small.  And obviously my mirror hates me.  How is it right that 90% of my shirts were too short, so that the post-baby-muffin-top hangs out in THE MOST UNFLATTERING WAY?  Or they were too tight across the shoulders.  Heck, some of them were both.  I looked like a quarterback squeezed into a cheerleaders uniform.  And how come the Hulk can hulk out and still fit in his pants and I go and have one little baby and suddenly it’s like no amount of fabric can cover my ass?

Ugh.

The worst part is that I know what I used to look like in those clothes.  Cute.  Svelte.  Dare I say, sexy?  Okay a few of the tank tops bordered on “trashy” and I wouldn’t wear them now… but at least let me be able to get them over my head!!

I was able to salvage a number of shirts, a sweater, and a pair of pants.  I shockingly still fit in most of my shorts.  I now fit perfectly into my oversized dig clothing (*sob*).  But what is noticeable is how much of my clothing was purchased for a woman who had a flat tummy.  No muffin top.  “Clingy” and “fitted” were apparently my guidelines.  Solid colors, no decoration to draw the eye upward or distract from unwanted bulges (can you tell I’ve been studying “What Not To Wear”?), no delineation of a waistline (because I used to have a pretty obvious one, now, not so much).

It’s become apparent.  I need a new wardrobe.  One that says “yummy mummy.”  Will someone be so kind as to distract the Danish Boy while I go shopping?

Is this what life is like for other people?

I got up this morning and sent the Spawn off to daycare (that's another post) with the DB and settled in to my first morning of deadline-free bliss. [Edit: Friday!  This is what you get for writing a post one day and posting it the next, without checking to make sure you haven't made dumb ass errors like this!]

I was sitting in bed, reading and drinking my coffee and it suddenly hit me.

Deadline-free bliss.

I wasn't sitting in bed, convincing myself that I needed to have an hour of relaxation before I got up and did X, Y, Z or prepared for Q, R, or S.  There was no X, Y, Z, Q, R, S, or anything else for that matter!  The dishes had been done the night before.  I did my homework yesterday.  The Spawn was going to be of playing for hours and hours.  No one is coming to visit.  There are no holidays coming up.  I had nothing that needed to be done.  Anything I could think of could just as well be put off for another day.  Or two.  Or ten.

So I continued to sit there, reading and drinking my coffee, and reveling in the complete lack of guilt and anxiety that normally accompanies such indulgent behavior.  For once, this wasn't procrastination - this was freedom!

And then I got up and starting working on projects that I've been wanting to get to for MONTHS.

Like unpacking.

And organizing.

Sounds boring to you, but these are things that have gotten shoved aside because I've had childcare, homework, Christmas, and of course the DB's list of things he wanted to get done while he had time off. But now I had time to do them because there wasn't anything else I had to do first!

I made a corner for the Spawn.  She has two bookshelves that hold her toys.  Decorations will follow.  (Yes, when it's something more than what it is, I'll take a picture and post it for you guys.)  Some books are now in bookshelves rather than stacked on top of bookshelves.  And it is becoming apparent that I have more books than space.  Not that that's a big surprise.  The Spawn has two bookshelves and we used two other bookshelves for kitchen things, so I'm down four bookshelves.  But still, it *is* an impressive amount of books.  Especially since books cost so much here that we acquire books at a much slower pace than I would if we lived in the US.  And we are lacking all the books I lost in the divorce all those years ago.  (Nope, I still haven't replaced them. And yes, I sometimes spend an hour looking for a book only to realize that I don't have it any more.)

http://bookshelfporn.com/

Love it!  Want it!

Someday I will have enough bookshelves.  I will never have enough books.  But if I could keep up with enough bookshelves, I'll be a satisfied woman.

So slowly I'm working my way through the house, organizing and cleaning.  

And if I can get this much done in just one day, I might just have the house in order within a year!

There will be bookshelves and boxes with labels and file cabinets with color coded tabs!

Oh, *swoon* bliss!!

(Yes, I do realize that this much joy surrounding organization suggests an illness.  But you gotta admit, of all the illnesses to have, one that causes you to organize and clean is really not that bad.)

Less Time Than Ever

I thought that having the Danish Boy home on paternity leave would mean I'd finally have time to do stuff. You know, write more blog posts, unpack boxes, sort through my clothes and get rid of all the stuff that doesn't fit, go through the Spawn's clothes and pack away the stuff that's too small.

And what happened?

I have less time.

It's the projects he's got.  Like chopping wood and mowing the lawn.  There was moving all the boxes out of the garage into the house because the garage floods.  There's picking up all the fruit that's fallen off the apple and pear trees.  There's the endless agonizing over the cars.

Yes, cars.  I owe you a post about how we accidently ended up with two cars.  But we have two and one is "making weird noises" and "there's a weird smell" and he's convinced that we somehow got screwed even though I think we got a good deal and hey, at 11 years old, a few dents and odd noises are expected and I smell nothing.  It runs.  It runs great, as a matter of fact.  And it has a baby-soothing radio.  And you do not need to be current on your tetanus shot to be eligible for a ride in it.

Anyway, what with all this going on, I'm still doing the vast majority of baby watching and not getting the stuff I wanted to get done, done.  I now need to come up with a dinner plan and go shopping.  This I could have done earlier today, but I didn't realize that he was only going to start mowing the lawn at 4:30 in the afternoon.

Do I sound a little bitter?  I am.  I had visions of productivity.  Visions, that with me going back to Danish next week, are going up in flames.  Yeah, I've had a shower every day this week and today I got to sleep in, but I've got no clean clothes and the dishes are still piling up.

Someday, right? Someday we'll catch up with life?

Just a few days to go...

And maybe we can stop fixing up the apartment!! I've noticed over the last few months that "his" projects have become "my" projects and things "we" will do becomes things that "I" will do. Like moving the couch. It was never going to happen, but it had to, because I had to empty that room. Mind you, my husband has been CRAZY busy ever since the media got ahold of the swine flu and suddenly my husband's editor realized WAIT, there are a lot of swine in Denmark... WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!

So I had to move the couch mahself. How does a 125 lb woman move a 100 lb couch (I have no idea how heavy the couch is, I can't really get it to hop on my scale and still be able to read the weight)? She rolls it. Up on one end, turn in desired direction, put up end down. Repeat as needed. Through a doorway and across the floor. I didn't even bother to take the legs off. Yup, I rock. I'm all about rolling furniture. If there was an olympic sport in furniture rolling, I'd be taking the gold. I managed to get a HUGE wardrobe up stairs all on my own, it took two men to get it back down. I told them to roll it, but they got all offended looking. I also have been known to pack boxes very tightly with things that are too heavy for me to lift, and then after some judicious taping, roll them up and down the stairs as needed.

The living room is set, the entry way has been pared down to two jackets each and two storage units of shoes per person (I only use one, the other is for hats, scarfs, and mittens), and the two bedrooms that will be inhabited Friday and Sunday are mostly clear (I need to know where to roll some items). I rocked out the doors from the kitchen and put them back on. I'll take an after shot AFTER I clean the kitchen thoroughly. What remains? My husband's project: the bathroom. It's not done. I'd go in and do it, but I'd get my head bitten off. There's priming and painting and sanding involved and I don't know which step he's at. Best not to get involved at that point. But I need my bathroom back. I'd like to NOT get out of the shower onto plastic. I'd like to be able to keep a towel in there and not worry about getting paint on it. I want to clean the bathroom!!



That last photo is of the hallway. Why is there so much crap in the hallway?
1) Nothing could be in the bathroom: see above
2) I had to spread the cabinet doors out over two rooms and when you are traipsing back and forth will oil paint, you do NOT want to drip, smear, or step with painted foot on your very nice floor. So you put down random newspapers.


My cabinet doors.

Yessiree, I take some mighty great photos of my life. Bet you are excited.

Promise, better ones to come soon. I found my other (prefered) camera. The EOS digital scares the bejeezus out of me, so fancy, too expensive for me to do anything other than cry if I drop it! I'll take the Elph, thanks.

If a bomb went off in my kitchen...

would anyone notice the difference?

I haven't washed dishes in two days. Moving an office and decimating dust bunnies (though, I hope I did more than decimate, because that only means kill one in ten and I'm really hoping I got more than that) leaves one with odd aches and pains (why, for instance does my elbow hurt?) and all the whacking my head and slipping on slippery floors and bashing my fingers didn't really help either, so I just can't bring myself to wash dishes. Even though I am out of spoons.

Who needs spoons anyway? I can drink my soup and eat the fiddly bits with a fork. And when I run out of forks there are knifes and wine bottle openers. And some other odd implements in my what-is-it drawer that I've never found a use for. Until NOW!

But then I prepped the kitchen for some last minute painting. Husband *was* planning on painting the cabinet doors. So I took 'em all off the cabinets, cleaned 'em, made a newspaper protective carpet for the floor, set up the banana boxes, laid out the cabinet doors (sans handles), and cleaned the areas around where the doors had been. Making kind of a mess in the process, but ... bygones, the doors are READY.

But then husband got some phone calls from some sources and then the newspaper and has spent most of the day working on a story that had been shelved until suddenly it WASN'T and he had to do something about it.

So my kitchen as it stands... or not so much at the moment... is doorless and the cabinets all naked and exposed, with food and towels all higgeldy piggeldy (I swear I folded the towels before I stuffed them onto the that shelf) and dishes pilled in haphazard post-modernist sculptures (at least they are rinsed so it's not like dried food is holding the piles together... oh, wait, then what IS holding the piles together?) and screws and knobs in rows (sometimes I can be VERY OCD).

Speaking of OCD, I was pondering how to organize my husband's tool boxes (he just got another one for a birthday present) (yes, his birthday was actually some time ago, no I didn't get him anything other than the continued presence of my wonderful self) (whadday mean it's weird for ME to organize my husband's tool box?)...

Too many parenthetical sub-clauses and things... let me regroup.

Right, so I was thinking of how I can organize my husband's tool boxes and I decided that one box should be for things that screw.... And I laughed so hard I had to sit down. Then I got up and began dancing (more like spastic sashaying) and singing (in my head, thank the lucky stars) "Screws to the left of me, hammers to my right and here I am... stuck in the middle with glue!" Which led to me leaning on the wall and gasping for air.

No one saw me. And that's probably a good thing, since I'd be posting this from the loony bin otherwise. But, boy, I crack myself up!

Murphy's Law

Murphy's Law rules my life. It seems there's not a darned thing that I can do to stop it.

So, I'm sorry, but I think it's going to rain.

See, I washed the windows yesterday. It took me 2 1/2 hours, 2 rolls of paper towels, half a bottle of glass cleaner, half a bottle of general cleaner and countless buckets of water. I hung my ass out of the second story (third for the Americans) to get the outside of the windows. I cursed the preservation society yet again for insisting that we have two sets of windows in each window instead of ONE set of DOUBLE PANED windows. (Their reasoning is that the light reflected off of the glass is different from the way the light would have reflected off the glass in 1640. Well no shit sherlock, they also made shitty glass back then you stupid fucks! Sorry. I get REALLY pissed off because my windows are NOT good and let warm air out and cold air in and are rotting after only 5 years and we're going to have to spend a fortune on buying more specially made windows that suck.)

Anyway, lots of windows. Lots of mould. Ugh. The sealant that holds the panes in place is coming off, which means we have to keep an eye out for falling panes of glass. Well, actually WE don't, because we live up here and it's the poor sods that live below us that need to watch out, but I'm nice enough to try to stop falling glass before it happens.

Oh and on the new special windows, the paint is STILL not dry and when they painted it they smeared it around on the glass and it just does not come off. But I am not leaning THAT far out with a razor to scrape it off. I have a terrible fear (self-preservation set at "high") of falling.

Who wears the pants?

I wears the pants!

Who else is going to go into the basement and dispose of two rather ripe rat corpses?

And who else is going to reset the traps?

Yup, I got me some PANTS!

However, next time someone finds a rat corpse, I'd rather appreciate it if they'd tell me sooner. No matter how manly my pants may be, it is not a pleasant task once they go squishy.*




















* Even fresh, it's not a pleasant task, it's just more uggy once decomposition sets in. Enjoy your dinner, folks!

Homeless in Aarhus

Well, the floors in the living room, dinning room, kitchen and hallway (being one big continuous floor without interruption, should I just say "floor"?) are being refinished which means I cannot be home. We've taken up residence in CabInn, which isn't that bad. It's cheap, it's downtown so getting a shwarma and hitting the city library was no problem. But I have no control over the temperature. I'm freakin' freezing in here.

This morning we made our way to Brabrand/Gellerup to look at some apartments. Yes, we'll be moving to the last ghetto in Denmark. No, we aren't part of some gentrification project (me, gentrified? are you kidding?), husband thinks this will be a very good way to really get inside the immigrant experience, since he'd like to do a series of articles about it. I think he also has white-guilt. And he might get to practice the little arabic he knows. My arabic is limited to things you yell at tourists who walk into your excavation and things you yell at the teenage workers who would rather play with their phones and smoke cigarettes than move the dirt you just put in the wheelbarrow. I'm pretty sure I won't have to yell at someone to move their wheelbarrow or to go away because it is forbidden. But you never know. I just want to live somewhere cheap so that we can pull ourselves out of this financial meltdown.

We'd really like a two room apartment, because the three room is HUGE, 101 sq meters. Which, for normal people might not be that big, but we've just downsized and I don't have the stuff to fill it. Two rooms is also cheaper. But we cannot live in a one room - 40 sq meters. That's just madness. The apartments that small have no ovens, just two hot plates. And the laundry is located in freakin' Germany, instead of the basement where laundry belongs.

So the three room apartment we looked at today was... welll... not exactly squalid. They patched up the holes in the walls and painted it all nice and fresh. But the bathroom and kitchen date from when the building was first put up in the 70's. You step into a tiled volcano to get into the shower - which is an accident waiting to happen. The kitchen is pretty foul, but has an oven and space and hookups for a dishwasher. The management will let you take out a loan to replace the kitchen, though, so maybe we could do that. 'Cause, URG.

The perks would be the crazy low rent, the view isn't too bad (there is greenery), it was shockingly quiet and fairly tidy (a few notable exceptions, but mostly tidy), Bazar Vest, and the most interesting political commentary on the Palestinian government factions scrawled on the walls of the elevator. There seemed to be more Fatah supporters than Hamas.

So how do I feel about it? Pretty neutral. I would rather live in a prettier place, where the buildings aren't hideous concrete blocks. But it will be cheap, so cheap that we can start to pay off the debts and maybe even put some money aside like all the financial advisors advise. I won't be weirded out by the immigrants, that's for sure, I'm already surrounded by people I can't understand (and not just language-wise). But if we go with this three bedroom, I still can't have a cat. Sigh.

I'm going to have to finally figure out the bus system or learn to bike in traffic.

It keeps you on your toes

This is the reason for Danish weather. There can't be any other use for it, because lord knows it's been less than useful these past few years. But the last 24 hours reminded me, yet again, that New England weather has got NOTHING on Danish weather.

Except of course, NE weather SUCKS more.

The last 24 hours went something like this - I'm doing my thing at my desk and when I got up and walked past the window about fourish, there was a complete white-out blizzard raging. Okay, I exaggerate with the blizzard, but I really couldn't see much other than white and grey through my window. So I crank up the heat, watch the snow a bit, and go back to my thing. Then when I get up to turn on the oven (yeah frozen pizza!) I see that it's no longer snowing, it's pouring rain. Okay, turn down the heat. My husband comes home and tells me that while it's raining down here by the river, it's still snowing just up the hill. These aren't San Francisco hills, mind you. I have once ridden my bike up that hill. Once. Never again, I swear it. Not worth the infarction. Anyway I get up today and there is sun. It's so bloody warm I don't turn on the heat. I open windows. I contemplate shaving my legs (yeeeaaah, at least I thought about it). I wonder where I put my sandals (this is because in New England, when the weather turns this way, everyone pulls out their sandals and run around like psychotic rabbits leaping over the piles of snow that will hang out until April). Now, just about 24 hours after I first noticed snow, it is very overcast with a stiff wind. Heat gets turned up.

This is the joy of Danish weather. It becomes increasingly schizophrenic as winter and spring fight it out. It would all go much better if winter would just happen in December-February, but it seems that fall is a big bully and takes up all of September-January, leaving winter to fight with spring about the meaning of February and March. I think this is also the reason we don't always have summer. Summer is the poor middle child of Danish weather. It gets forced out. Spring, no matter whether or not she's won the March fight, will sometimes pout all the way through August. Summer may get a week in during August, but that's probably it. Fall then bullies his way back onto the schedule and we switch rain coat for not-to-heavy wool coat.

In other news, we have still not yet painted the rest of the trim. There is a good reason for this: exhaustion, but also there was an incident on Thursday that laid me out for two days. I'll tell that story when my ego isn't so bruised.

I am contemplating watching the Oscars. Last night this led to us wondering if we'd actually gone and watched any movies in 2008 - but I know we went and saw Indiana Jones and I think we went and saw something at the Ebeltoft Film School, but I can't remember what it was. So mostly it would be to watch for the dresses, the speeches, and Hugh Jackman.

But then my dear spouse comes and tells me that we'll be painting trim tonight - we must! Ah, he's been driving his taxi for a very long time and has only had a few hours sleep. Yes, I am *SO* looking forward to tonight's paint extravaganza.

Oh, and for the last few days we've been having half of the floors in the apartment done. The floorman, while I admire his pre-industrialism attitude towards work, was supposed to come right after new years. He didn't call, he didn't come. We were going to get someone else to come, except that we couldn't afford anyone else. The floorman then called and explained that he'd hurt his back and that's why he didn't come. Lame excuse. I've thrown out my back and it's never stopped me from making a phone call. Whatever asshat.

But he's still the cheapest and he does fine work... when he works... so we have to take him. Grumble grumble. Thankfully he normally doesn't appear until some time around 10 am (instead of 7:30 you horrible window painting baboons!) and leaves around 3. Now, if he was a bit more of a... I don't know... professional... he could have knocked out these rooms in a hurry, but he never did come over on Friday (no excuse, just never came) and so now he's worked some hours over the weekend... but anyway the apartment smells of wood, there is sawdust in the darnedest places and an overwhelming stench of polyurethane or something is wafting up the hallway from the back bedrooms. The floorman has been in a fit (such as it is) to finish those rooms by today so we can "move into them," he keeps saying. He told us we could "move in" over the weekend, but then he sort of kind of not at all put in enough work during the week for this to happen. But that's not really important, because we aren't "moving into" those rooms. Husband keeps telling floorman this, and saying that it needs to be done faster so we can rent out this apartment, but floorman is not the brightest crayon in the box and it hasn't sunk in.

Also, we have to move out when he does the hallway and kitchen, because we can't walk on the floors when they're sticky and thus, can't reach the bathroom. But what day this will be is completely up in the air. Floorman keeps saying "yeah, it won't be a problem." Uh, not for you, bozo, but we live here.

So I might find myself suddenly shifted to another location. I don't particularly care, the other option was that we live in the back rooms and use the back stairs to go to the bathroom in the public 2 kroner toilet for TWO DAYS, if the floorman is as efficient as he says he will be (read: it will take 4 days if not more). I have a frustrating (to me) bladder, the farther I am from the toilet, the more often I have to pee. And if I have to go out into cold weather, the amount of times I will REALLY REALLY have to pee will multiply exponentially. I can work next to a toilet all day, drink lots of coffee and never have to go - because the toilet is right there and it's so convenient. The public toilet, on the other hand, costing 2 kroner to get in, a good three minute walk away, crossing two streets to get to it, is an invitation to disaster. There'd also be no shower and no water to drink, because we couldn't get into the kitchen either. So we'd have to buy water and go out to eat... but we couldn't bathe first.

Yeah, no. I do that on digs and as long as everyone is in the same boat it's NO PROBLEM but here? Oh, hell no. Nope. Nada. Can't make me. Grounds for divorce. Justifiable homicide.

Other names for "domestic"

A good friend of mine emailed the following list to me. And I just about spit coffee everywhere! So, I do feel I ought to share this list of names that one may use instead of say house wife...

Domicile Goddess
House Diva
Abode Warrior ( mostly for cleaning not cooking)
Bringer of hot food and sparkly home
Domus Frau
Lucious and lovely lady of light and joy
familial harmonizer
conjugal facilitator ( maybe not that one it sounds like a pimp)
Domestic Dominatrix ( hard to be broken when you have the whip, it
should also appeal to your Indiana Jones side)
hearth keeper ( appealing to your Roman side)
Maker of the bread, Kneader of the dough ( to appeal to your northern
European medieval side)

I'm really leading towards domestic dominatrix. X-D

It's Friday...

...and the paint is STILL NOT DRY!

This is because
a) the painters are morons and painted too thick of a coat of the linseed oil paint using regular bristle brushes instead of the special brushes and left the same bloody streaks and globs as we had before.
b) there is no b.

These were different painters suggested by the architect in charge of the project. Does no one in Denmark know how to paint our oh-so-special windows required by the "special" Historical Preservation Society (oh, those folks are special, so very very special)?

Painters: 0 Windows: 2

After one night of sleeping on the floor in one of the spare rooms not currently a refrigerator we decided that screw the paint, we were going to close the window in the bedroom and get a proper night's rest. I did open the window again this morning and got wet paint on my hands. WET PAINT!!

ARGH!!

Do you know what it's like, cooking dinner and washing dishes while wearing a scarf and a woolen hat? It's like camping, but without the joy of knowing you are on vacation.

Would some one please whisk me away to somewhere hot where they serve drinks in coconuts?

Brrrrrrrr!

It's two degrees above freezing and I sit here in the house with half the windows open!

Whut? Have I gone mad? It's two degrees above freezing!!

Well, when the new windows were installed there were some problems. This is what happens when you live in a historical building and the historic preservation society takes an interest. The windows had to look a certain way and be made of wood and could not be double paned and had to be painted in linseed oil paint. There are only so many companies that do this and so we used the company that had done other windows for this building in the past. This was a logical step, yes/no?

Except that the company had changed hands and the new owners were not really all that interested in historical accuracy and pushed the craftsmen who made our windows to work faster than one should. So the linseed oil paint was applied too thickly with the wrong type of brushes and then the windows were installed before all this thick gooey paint could cure.

So we ended up with gloppy windows that turned YELLOW!

Thankfully when the historic preservation society stopped by to check on us, they were also appalled and demanded that the company do something. Including changing the hardware on the windows because brushed stainless steel is INCORRECT. It must needs be white hardware. Seriously, the people are a little nuts about historical accuracy. Historical accuracy is all nice and good until it means you end up spending 24 freezing your butt off because your windows are open and you also spend more on heat because your windows are not 21st century eco-friendly. I wonder if we ought to be using lead-based paint on the walls, after all, that is what would have been used back in the day...

Anyway, the painters arrived this morning at 7:30. Yes, you read that right. SEVEN FREAKIN' THIRTY IN THE BLOODY MORNING!! They had said 8:30, but apparently were just too excited to go to work that they didn't want to stop and get coffee or something. Not that you can get coffee because even the coffee shops are closed that early in the morning. That's not true. A lot of Denmark is up and functioning out on the street at 7:30 am. But still, no one likes to be woken up by the arrival of painters who are ahead of schedule.

So in they came, I toddled off to a different bedroom to go back to sleep (on a folding mattress, I am NOT amused today) and they proceeded to make a racket, a mess, and a freezer of my home. See, the windows cannot be closed for 24 hours. That means my office, living room, dining room, kitchen, hallway to the bathroom, and bedroom are all open to the elements. Which are cold. For the next 24 hours.

I have set up a temporary office in the smallest bedroom that faces the courtyard and was not affected by the window replacement. It was my other bedroom this morning and later today it will serve as a dining room. I sort of feel like a receptionist in an office. I'm sitting here at a bare table with nothing but my computer, a desk lamp, and a glass of water. Nothing on the walls, no piles of research (yet). And I have a chair on the other side of the table... really it looks as if I'm waiting for a client or something.

In addition to the absurd conditions I'm working under, I'm wearing a full set of long underwear with woolen outerwear. If I was wearing waterproof pants and a jacket, I could go skiing in this get up. Well, if there were snow. At least there is no snow. Yet. But the clothes keep me warm enough for when I have to zip down to the bathroom or spend an extended amount of time in the kitchen.

Tonight will be a joy. We'll probably be camping out in this room. One person on this folding mattress and someone on the couch cushions. Thank god for flannel pajamas! Oh, and also Gammel Dansk and Aquavite - two crazy liquors that you can drink during the day in Denmark when it's cold. Gammel Dansk with breakfast and Aquavite (schnapps) with lunch!

Wisdom... let me impart some to you

In my previous post I warned you about the nail trimming capabilities of potato peelers. Now let me tell you about knifes. Knifes are sharp. If you can't cut something with your knife, it may NOT be that the knife is not sharp, but that your, let's say "onion" for example, is not so crispy fresh. If you decide to proceed with sharpening your knife without testing the knife on something else first, like ANYTHING ELSE IN YOUR KITCHEN, then you should make sure at all times to watch the KNIFE and NOT the SHARPENER. In fact a GREAT idea would also be to married or dating someone who is not blood squeamish.

I live, you learn.

It wasn't that bad, I hit my hand with the knife I was so happily dragging through the sharpener and gave myself a good sized paper-cut-like injury. But there was some blood. The love of my life, who can lift heavy things and reach the high up places, is not one for blood. He called me out of the kitchen where I was staunching my wound to look at the Danish chimney sweepers, who still wear traditional clothing for their job. Which, yes, does include a stove-pipe hat. I took the opportunity to show him my war wound whereas he beat a hasty retreat. Had to get back to painting. He later apologized for not helping me with the bandaging but he "didn't realize it was bad." This is because he couldn't bear to look. It's okay. I can do first aid on myself most of the time and have no problems tearing medical tape with my teeth.

Blood and needles don't bother me. But I can't deal with vomit. When we have small people I will deal with skinned knees and he will handle the stomach flu.

So my right hand is out of action for painting purposes. That's fine, I'm left handed... oh, but if you do nothing but paint with your left arm all day... you wear it out. Arm, wrist, elbow, you name a part of my left arm, it hurts. But sore hurts. Not like tendon tearing hurts. I'll be fine.

I can see you all now thinking "gee AG, you need to take better care of yourself" and "stop injuring yourself! take things easy!" This is what my husband says to me, right before he asks me to grab the other end of the couch so we can haul it down three flights of stairs. (I did throw the christmas tree down from the balcony rather than carry it, but it wasn't really heavy to begin with.) To me "taking it easy" involves drinking wine on the couch and watching episodes of Stargate SG-1 (now playing on our new tv channel "for men" - should include "and for archaeogoddesses"). But I don't think this is what he had in mind.

Anyway, you all worry too much. I tell you these things so that you will LEARN from my errors and become better, wiser, stronger people! So take this lesson with you: knifes are sharp.

Most people learn these things early in life, I was obviously not paying any attention at the time.

Painting blues

It's all taping and painting, taping and painting. The tape is taking the skin off my hands and then the paint has to be scrubbed off too, making my hands shadows of their former selves. Ugh, the horror! Not that I could have been a hand model at the best of times, but this is outrageous. And I keep taking off the fingernail on my right index finger with the potato peeler. What kind of an idiot trims their nails accidently with a potato peeler?? This kind of idiot. I haven't cut myself with it yet, which is a good thing, but I have the most odd looking fingernail now. Dangerous things potato peelers and masking tape. Paint you expect to be kind of dangerous. It is full of terrible vapors and you must keep it out of your eyes and for heaven's sake don't drink it - but the warnings on masking tape do not include: warning, will not stick to oil based painted trim but will remove skin!

We are still waiting for the floor man to make his grand appearance. We're sort of on a tight schedule here, so he'd best hurry up. We're going to rent out our place through an agency that rents to ex-pats working in Denmark. Since many of these assignments are several years long, they bring their families, so our huge apartment should be a real winner. We need to get it up to snuff so we can be ready to move at a moments notice.

I hate moving, but I hate worrying about foreclosure more. This will take care of that problem, with any luck.

Meanwhile the bank is freaking out and being complete asshats. When we moved the branch we use as our local branch was suddenly not so local any more, so Danish Boy got around to asking to be transfered to the closest branch to us currently. And was DENIED! They don't want him at their branch!! What? Can they do that? Who knows, but they did. The manager called the DB last night and told him not to bother to come to the meeting on Friday because they weren't going to transfer him to their branch. She didn't want us in her branch. Have a nice day!

As soon as we get all this apartment stuff straightened out we are switching banks. Once my residency is approved, I am opening a bank account somewhere else. Ridiculous! They've always been jerks, but this takes the cake.

And I got a letter from my dig director, asking when I should be flying into Israel this summer. Er? You want me to think of that right now? She did agree that this was WAY early to ask, but we need to book rooms for us at the British Institute and they fill up early. So best guesses were made.

So busy busy busy. The living room is now officially white. Horrible sterile white. Ugh.

I've got prune hands!!

The walls, ceilings, and exposed beams have been washed. It took ALL FREAKIN' DAY!!

This is partly because I had to keep going up and down a step ladder to reach the top of the walls and the beams and the ceiling (although after the first couple of inches of ceiling I decided that my very tall husband could do that bit). Another part of the problem is that some moron decided that walls should go from the ceiling all the way down to the floor! Honestly! The floor is way down by my feet! There was a lot of bending and squatting and kneeling and finally as my knees and ankles and toes gave out, sitting.

We used three bottles of industrial strength cleaner.

And this is because of the main obstacle to our progress - the disgusting state of the walls. I did manage to do one room in under an hour and with only one bucket of soapy water. The rest... well... Let me put it this way, in one room we found foot prints on the wall... four feet up. In another room it looked as if a small child had drawn on the wall with crayons. We didn't let out the room to any small children, so you really gotta wonder what was going on. In another room we found lots of smooshed bugs on the walls. Now if I squish a bug, I use a kleenex and then wipe the wall vigorously to remove any hint of squashed bug. I guess I'm just weird that way. Just about every wall had a thin coat of grey oily dust. Eww. From now on no one will be allowed to breath or shed skin cells in my house. No one!

We also defrosted the deep freeze. It's been three years and we removed two buckets of ice. I know I said "defrosting" - but we got impatient and it became deicing. That was also rather gross, because when people spill things in a large freezer, they don't empty everyone else's crap in order to clean up. I don't particularly blame them, it's a big freakin' freezer and things were organized so that everyone had a space... well, in theory... so you didn't want to move things around for fear of losing someone's stuff. Or worse, losing your own stuff. But it would have been nice if they'd organized themselves from time to time and said, "Right, there is so much ice in here we can't fit the ice-cube tray in the ice-cube tray space... There will be a massive defrost party on Saturday!" Oh well. It's clean now and it didn't take THAT long. I got to poke and hit things and enjoy the crashing sound of ice slushing and crunching as it fell beneath the onslaught of my spatula.

Dang I'm tired.

This Site is Under Construction

Or more specifically, the apartment.

First was the wall removal. There was a dividing wall in one of the rooms, making one large room into two small areas that weren't really useful to anyone for anything. You could just fit a double bed on one side (provided you both wanted to climb into bed via the foot) and on the other side a wonky outer wall meant that you could fit the bed and several other items... but then you had this weird space on the other side of the wall to figure out what all to do with. I suppose you could use it as a changing area... but still, it was a badly placed wall.

So out it went.

This is when we discovered the very odd construction of the apartment. Seems when they did the renovation back in the 70's, they built the walls first and then laid the new floors on top of the old floors but only laid the new floors up to the wall. So when you remove a wall you are left with a GAPPING hole in the floor. Underneath which you could see the original floors dating back to the 1800's when the building had been redone after the fire.

We had the floor repaired, which was a bit tricky since none of the boards line up, but the carpenter is fine fellow of a man and with a bit of hand crafting managed to do it. The floor-sanding man will be coming at some point soon to check on the floors and discuss how exactly do we want to go about sanding all the floors in the apartment, apart from the two rooms that have already been done and which we are currently living in. Yes, that sentence ends in a preposition, but does it look like I care? Nope, I have other things to do than think grammar.

Today was the first day of our massive project. The dear husband has actually already been plastering holes for a few days now - there were two rather large holes left in the ceiling where the electrician had originally drilled through to put wiring into the no-longer-extant wall and these took some time to fix. Denmark does not apparently have the sort of DIY know-how to fix drywall, but the internet helps out mightily.

But anyway, back to today and step one of said project. In all the rooms that need to be painted (everywhere except the kitchen and the hallway that got a fresh coat this summer) the furniture had to be moved and everything came down off the walls. Christmas and New Years are now officially over as everything had to be put away. All the screws and nails had to come out, any shelves or shoe storage devices had to be removed and anything too large to be put in the hallway (the freezer) is now in the center of the room.

How many rooms does this apartment have? Uh, a lot.

Entry - needs paint and floor work
Living room/dining room - paint and floor
Bedroom 1/Office - perfect, thank you very much
Bedroom 2 - paint and floor
Hallway/kitchenette - floor
Kitchen - floor and we need to paint the cupboards
Bathroom - paint (it needs floor work, but it's been linoleumed and we aren't even going to attempt to redo it what with the drains and shower and other stuff, it'll be fine in it's spring green colored splendor)
Bedroom 3 - paint and floor
Bedroom 4 - perfect
Bedroom 5 - paint and floor
Bedroom 6 - paint and floor

So having moved everything away from the walls and having removed everything FROM the walls, the Danish Boy has been running around with plaster and a putty knife and is happily (okay, not so happily) trying to make things look pretty.

Trying. We have chipboard wall-paper. Ask the Brits about how much this stuff sucks.

Not to mention that the morons in 1970 didn't bother to seal their drywall or use joint filler in the joints and so there is much cracking, tearing, and overall distress to our walls. It would help if the walls weren't at such crazy angles. I am convinced that part of the building is slowly and surely moving away from another part of the building. Like tectonic drift, the wall in the entry way is heading west while the rest of us go east. The front door, which ought to be part of that westward traveling wall, is determined to come east with us. The whole thing is coming OUT of the wall!! We beat it, to try to cow it into submission, but to no avail.

Once the holes are filled... and dry... we need to wash the walls. You would not believe how disgusting the walls are. Maybe you would. I'm not the cleanest person on the planet (comes with the digging in the dirt) but I am not sure how people have been able to spill food on the wall and then not notice. Whatever, they have to be washed before we can paint. Then there will be the taping and the papering of things that need to be taped and painted, since the trim which is all over the place, not merely around the doors, floors and windows like you would expect, but wherever those mad 70's renovators felt the need (note, our ceilings not only slope because we are in the attic, sometimes the whole ceiling level drops down to meet the exposed beams and some times it rises up so we have over a foot of space above the beams! Logic knows this place not.).

I don't think we'll wash the walls tonight. Probably first thing in the morning tomorrow. We also need to put up some more chipboard in the space left by the removed wall. Yeah, that'll look real purdy.

Chores I deplores

I hate doing laundry. Absolutely hate it. There's the sorting and the piles and the going back multiple times to change loads out and put new loads in and then there is the folding of the dry laundry and the putting of the laundry away... I really hate it. Yes, in normal life I'd only have to wash my clothes once a week. And in the lovely life I used to have, my husband did the laundry for me. I would fold and put away, but then he helped me with the dishes... sort of.

Well, now things have changed. We live with roommates which means no using the timer to start the laundry an hour before the husband comes home. I've got to get the laundry done and I've got to get it done before people come home and want to do their laundry, or worse, take up the space on the drying rack.

Originally I had been banned from the machine for a certain pink incident but now I have to do the laundry if we ever want clean clothes. This is difficult for my husband to grasp. He says things like, well, just take the load out and I'll sort it before bed. Yes, I say, meaning that we'd get one load done in a day, and there would be no room on the line for our clothes now that everyone else has also done their laundry. Do you want clean underwear or not?

I finally got sick of the whole thing and started doing my own laundry. No one died and I think the DB is starting to relent. He's not nearly so upset about my accidently drying his black shirts as he was 5 years ago. I think he's starting to learn that if your black shirt gets accidently machine dried twice in 5 years, it is not worth your marriage to make a big deal out of it.

Of course my relationship to clothes is: if you can't take the heat, you don't belong in the closet. I don't read most of the tags in my clothes. Though often I will if I am debating buying something. Dry clean only gets returned to the shelf unless I really love it or I think it can handle the wash. I separate into darks (cold water wash), whites and underwear (hot water wash), and colors (everything else in a warm water wash). I sort by what the article looks like (color) and ignore it's pleas regarding fabric and wash-inside-out-ness. Yes, I have in fact put wool in the dryer. Once. So's my husband ("how was I supposed to know it was wool" because I call it my wool knit hat perhaps? Eh, it survived. I'll probably dry it myself someday), you wanna make something of it?

I am slowly learning the little signs they put on labels. The X over the box with the circle in it, that might represent a dryer to those who are into symbology, means don't dry. I think. Items that have this symbol are not going into the dryer.

There is a website for all this. http://www.textileaffairs.com/lguide.htm

But I can't remember all that and I am not taking my computer into the bathroom. Maybe I'll print it out for myself.

This does not solve the other problem. The washing machine is Danish. It doesn't use these symbols. It has words like "Kort" and "stortskraeling" or something. It also uses Celsius rather than Fahrenheit and has no such thing as Permanent Press. Not that I know what Permanent Press is, but I know it is very good to wash everything on this cycle and dry everything with this cycle. It is the best cycle.

But at least I'm getting clean clothes again. Clothes that are dried the civilized way, in a tumble dryer. Even if they shouldn't be tumble dried. The husband will also be getting his clothes cleaned. And if he's lucky, his black shirts will not accidently end up in the dryer, but on a line.

In return I've asked him to wash the dishes if I've cooked. Because he's getting out of all the chores these days and it's a bit unfair.

Yesterday was a bad day

And so I'm not going to even talk about it.

Today has been better.

To try to get a handle on all the things that I need to do and break them down into manageable lumps so that SOMETHING can get done every day, I've broken the list into sections and then vow to do one thing from each section. The sections are:
1) do one thing involving paperwork (someday this will be the dissertation section).
2) unpack something
3) figure out dinner and shop if you must
4) move something

Obviously once the move is finished, I can scratch two sections off my list. I'll probably have to make a new list, but for the moment, this keeps me sane. I do not have to work on one thing all day, feeling like I'm falling behind on something else and I can feel at the end of the day like shit got done. And you know how important it is to feel like you've gotten shit done.

Also, because I'm a little OCD, I like to do these things in order.

So if you'll excuse me, I have to go shopping now.

Grand plans laid to waste

Okay, a little over dramatic. I was going to write about the frittata I had made.

It went like this:

What is a “frittata”?

Well, the word “fri” comes from our word “Friday” which everyone knows really means “free day” or day of freedom and since the 4th of July has been known to fall on Friday this means that not only should you be very free with this recipe, but it may also be your patriotic duty to be free with this recipe.

The word “tata” is another word for boobs, which are also known as “jugs” which are containers that are known to hold all kinds of stuff in them.

Therefore a frittata is a casserole where you are free to put whatever you want into it.

Thus ends our brief lesson about the etymology of the frittata.

But the frittata turned out to be a bit of a disaster. I need to play with the recipe a bit.

But something also rather strange happened with the bread I baked and with the potatoes I roasted the other day. I hesitate to say, in case reality warps in order to bring this into being, but my oven may be *erk* on the fritz. When you turn the oven to 200* C (400 F for those who care) you should not be able to comfortably stick your arm in there for any length of time. I mean, that's hot, right?

I'm not sure how to test this because my meat thermometer only goes up to 100 C. I suppose I could set it for 100...

I'll think about doing that later.

Meanwhile, I now know why people swear by their bread machines. Gah, the bread I made included the instruction: stir the dough, adding more flour, to form a firm dough. Eventually I had to just take off my rings and dive in with one hand while the other kept shoveling flour into the mess. Sticky sticky dough.

Which would then not come out of the bowl or off the scrubby I used to clean the bowl or my poor encrusted hand.

It tastes pretty good. But I added caraway seeds as per instructions and turns out neither the DB nor I like caraway all that much. Oh well. I only made FOUR loaves.

Which will last about 4 days.

Gad, with only the two of us, you'd think the food would last longer. I got $20 to get us through this week. It looks like cabbage soup and pasta and pesto for the next 7 days.

Today is also chore day. I hate chores. I would much rather clean when I should be doing something else, cleaning is how I procrastinate. So what do I do when I'm procrastinating the procrastinating?

Write blog posts, obviously.

But I don't wanna wash the floor. Or take out the trash. Or go to recycling.

I also do not want to go shopping for milk and spaghetti. And I certainly do not want to chop up 6 cups of cabbage for the soup tonight.

I do not want to go to the other apartment and try to pack stuff and move stuff.

DO NOT WANT!

I think I do want to hold a pity-me party and sip cognac while in my pjs and watch Dirty Jobs on Discovery.

I don't think I have a choice however.

I am remiss.

I am completely remiss in writing. It's just been a bit busy these last few weeks. I'll give you a taste now and hopefully (cross your fingers, but for the love of god don't hold your breath) I'll write an extended post on some of these subjects later.

First to happen was a lightning weekend trip to London. I have gotten my passport stamped and I am visa-ed up for another three months. I finally got to see the Tower of London and the Museum of London, meaning that I am extraordinarily happy and also mad, since now I need to think of something else I need to see in order to have a good excuse to go back ASAP. I love London.

Dissertation update: It will not be done this spring. I'm going to try to have it done in November, when I have to go to Boston for ASOR. Maybe I can combine the trip with defending and filing. I'll walk next spring.

I did just turn in a chapter and while I'm waiting for feedback I took some time off to get some other things done around the house that I've been putting off. Like folding clothes and some cleaning. I am pleased to see that the Danish boy is not just wearing the same three tee shirts again and again and I now have a full complement of socks. We also can now see the living room table, I can see parts of my desk and you can almost walk through the office. This is an improvement, you used to not be able to walk through the office at all. You had to hop, duck and weave.

I wrote up some scholarship applications and sent them off. Not much to say about that but I hope I get them. I am not known for my grant procuring abilities and it'd be nice to get awarded for an application I actually did instead of the kind the schools give out because they know you need it. Although, any money of any kind from anyone would be appreciated.

I have finally finished making what seems to be the final proof of my wedding invitation. I printed it out and glued one up for my dad, who needs a copy to give to his boss in order to get the time off (yes, he might have to provide his own death certificate if he dies so that he can get the day off to go to his own funeral). I was admiring my handiwork when I discovered I'd misspelled my own last name. Curses. Peeling paper that you have just glued is a pain in the butt, peeling paper that you have let the glue dry on is a pain beyond words. Spelling fixed, it may be possible that I will print and assemble invitations this week, before my chapter revisions come in and I am driven back to work.

Meanwhile the newest and happiest news is:

The Danish boy and I have bought a new car! "New" being relative, since it's a 1988 Volvo. I love it. It makes me happy. I am again driving a tank (the worlds safest tank) and swear the car is happy too. It's a family car, which means that when we do have a family to put in it, we'll be ready! Actually, since we'll have to put my family in it in July, it's not an obscene purchase. We'll be selling the other Volvo, which is a total pain in my ass, ASAP. We may actually make money on this trade, because the Volvo we're selling is worth more than the one we bought. But since the one we bought is what we need in a car and the other one is NOT, it makes lovely sense, really.