Musings at 19 weeks

I swore I'd never wear leggings.  But then I got pregnant and fat and couldn't wear my long underwear and since it was deemed that all pregnant women are always hot, there isn't any maternity long underwear in the land of cold-flesh-stripping-wind, so I succumbed to the next best thing.  At least I'm not wearing them under sweaters and pretending they are the same thing as pants, because, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, they are SO NOT. Yes, chick on the bike with the floral panties, you may want to reconsider your fashion choices.

Anyway, in this post I want to take you back a few years, to a time when I was dedicated to the idea that I would never have children.  I'm not a fan of kids.  I can think of a few that I like, some quite a lot, but generally, they piss me off.  And babies?  Seriously, socks and duct tape were invented because of babies.  I can think of 100 reasons to not have children.  Many of which are very noble, like “there are too many people in the world, I should not add another mouth to it!”  Others less noble but no less valid like “I really am grossed out by poop.”  Standing in line behind a woman and her brood of snotty entitled brats, I'm the one usually thinking, "enforced sterilization, brilliant idea!  We can put it in kool-aid!"

I still have those thoughts, by the way.  Don't think the "joys" of impending motherhood have made me baby-crazy.  I see a screaming child throwing himself on the floor of the supermarket while his mother begs him to stop and offers him chocolate and I'm thinking, "if I run you both down in the parking lot, Darwin will thank me.  I'll get a motherf*cking medal!"

Years ago I didn’t even think I had what it took to be a mother.  The culturally reinforced idea being that the “Perfect Mother” is patient and caring and loving and calm and, above all, happy to sacrifice every ounce of their soul to the care and nurture of their child. You hear these ideals all the time from mothers, don't you?  The "I gave it all up for my child and it was the best thing that ever happened to us" "Once I knew I was going to be a mother, nothing else mattered" "You stop being selfish the moment you become a mother."  Quick, quick, tell me more about how you gave up saving gorillas and a place at Harvard Law school for your child!  I can totally match that.  I gave up… heroin.  Yeah.  Actually, I was *going* to be a heroin junkie, but I gave up that dream for the sake of my child.  The sacrifices I make, you wouldn’t even believe it!  You also hear the scorn in their voices when they talk about women who put their children into daycare and rush off back to work (and who worse yet, are glad to talk to adults again), who, oh the horrors, dyed their hair while pregnant (it totally gives your kid autism, dontcha know), the women who hire nannies and then ship the spawn off the boarding schools. Okay, I'm totally with you on that one.  Hiring an au pair so you can keep up with your book club-museum openings-Sex in the City-lifestyle?  Why the hell did you bother to breed, you cow!  And since I knew that I would not want to stop being an archaeologist and going to far off places,  I just figured that children and I would just not mix.

But I've come to think about motherhood differently, obviously, before I got pregnant (so this is not the hormones talking, I thought this stuff out long and hard).  I changed my mind and figured, hell yeah, I can totally do this, I have amazing genes and gifts that should be passed on to posterity!  If other women can keep up with their careers and have grown up jobs, why is this denied to archaeologists?  Why can’t I have it all?  Why can’t I just try?  Why, since I certainly don’t fit into anyone’s idea of a cultural norm, expect to fit into the über-narrow category of “Perfect Mother?”  Why should I even try - the “Perfect Mother” usually turns up on Nanny 911 or Supernanny begging for help because she’s too patient and caring and has become nothing but a breeding doormat with a brood of future sociopaths!  

This change in thinking is because I've been reading a lot of blogs over these last few years - written by women who may not necessarily fit the culturally accepted idea of the “Perfect Mother,” but who rock at parenthood all the same. Women like The Bloggess, as well as Dooce, the Pioneer Woman, and Aunt Becky (from Mommy wants Vodka), gave me the confidence I needed when I began to realize that I wanted to make little Archaeospawns with the Danish Boy.  You don't need to have all the things that THEY tell you make a “Perfect Mother.”  What you really need are balls.

Metaphorically speaking.  Although the other kind do help with the conception bit of Mommyhood.  

(And I do know of a number of individuals who have balls, who make excellent Mommies, although we call them Daddies, but I'm talking about the cultural ideal of "motherhood" to which I think many women feel the need to live up to.  Fatherhood comes with it’s own set of problems.)

Dooce taught me that you can have severe post-partum depression, ending in a full on break-down, get hospitalized, and still be a great mom (no one's died - I say, SUCCESS!).  Pioneer Woman taught me that you can end up living a life you never expected and you are quite possibly not qualified for but still successfully raise kids in circumstances you never imagined and that it's okay to not do laundry and miss sushi.  Aunt Becky taught me that you can be full of compassion, patience and respect for people, and sometimes you can want to beat them with baseball bats, get uproariously drunk and dance on tables, and this is okay too.  The Bloggess taught me that you can be off the wall, slightly nuts, and absolutely glorious and still be a mom.  

Then there's all the real-life moms I know...

Actually, they intimidate me because they are totally grace under fire.  Ladies, could you please bitch a bit more about your kids?  The times you want to bop them on the head or run away and join the circus because at least then you'd get some peace and quiet?  I mean, I get why you don't, because some nutjob (or ex-thing) will call child-protective services on you and trolls will leave nasty messages telling you how you have simply RUINED your child's life because don't you know EVERY CHILD IS A GIFT FROM GOD?

Despite having too many fantastic real-life roll-models that totally undermine my confidence levels, I realized that I have many excellent Mom qualities that are going to help me be an awesome mom.  Ever seen the contents of my purse?

Half of that stuff is first aid stuff.  The Tic-Tacs?  Actually holds painkillers.  The silver pill packet? Antihistamines.  Ray Bans?  'Cause a girl has to look cool, you know. (Hey I had a lot more money last year.  I worked in the desert, I needed sunglasses.  I lived in a tent, I deserved Ray Bans.)  I have eye drops and hand creams, lip balm, cuticle cream, iodine wipes and band-aids.  Hair clips and bobby pins (I may need to pick a lock) and throat lozenges.  I have a bus pass for Århus.  I have scratch paper and pens because I need to write stuff down (ISBN numbers for books I want, addresses, things I need to buy or remember) and my husband is a journalist who never remembers to carry a pen and notepad of his own.   I am PREPARED.

I may get distracted and put the peanut butter in the fridge and the butter in the pantry, but I know where almost all of my husband's belongings are at any given time.  I have cat like reflexes - my husband came THIS CLOSE to grabbing the door of the wood stove, which was HOT, with his bare hand, and I reached out, grabbed his hand and yelled "NO!"  I can also whip up a risotto out of whatever is in my kitchen.  I'm a lot more patient than I thought I was (dig with a stark raving lunatic who can't find his ass with both hands and a map, if you manage not to kill him - or even lose your temper with him when he totally screws up, *and* successfully excavate a square despite his best efforts, you are WAY more patient than Job, who was actually really kinda whinny).  And did I mention I have balls?  I can say "no" and risk you hating me forever and ever and I know you totally mean it this time!  I catch my kid eating dirt?  Ah, well, it's full of minerals, how about next time we eat some carrots, m'kay?  Skin your knee?  Uh, oh, do you think we'll have to amputate?  No? You think you're going to make it?  Well aren't you brave!  Let me just bind that up for you and you can be on your way then.

So thank you to all the moms out there who gave me insight into the workings of the mommy mind, those who blazed a trail for me to follow, those who tripped, fell, broke a limb and lived to tell me “dude, there is a serious pot-hole up ahead, watch your ass!” I say:

THANK YOU!  I AM GOING TO TOTALLY ROCK THE SHIT OUT OF MOMMYHOOD!

Hair!

Take a moment and enjoy this brief musical interlude from the musical "Hair!" (You can keep reading while it plays, nothing happens on screen.)

"But on the plus side," said my mother, "you'll have the most beautiful head of hair!"

I'm growing out my hair because
a) it's something I do about every 10 years
b) I'm too lazy to go get it cut
c) the cost of getting a haircut in Denmark is about a weeks groceries for two adults without dietary restrictions

The beautiful hair I was expecting, however, was supposed to be on my head. This has not necessarily been the case.

I'm not just hairy here. I'm hairy here, there, and everywhere, momma! HAAAAIIIIIRRRRRR!

I am a naturally hairy person anyway.  I trim my arm hair because it gets over 2 and a half inches long.  That's like 10 centimeters, non-American folks.  That's not arm hair, that's a freakin' pelt.  My leg hair isn't a forest of earthly delight, it's the jungle.  A bloody tropical rainforest.  To wax I need to buy two waxing kits and expect to only some of the hair from the knees to the ankles.  I tried an epilator once.  Ever get your hair caught in the wrong end of your hair dryer?  Yeah, it was like that.  And that was before I got pregnant.

Pregnancy and it's hair giving hormones have really upped the ante.  Whereas I had to pluck my eyebrows from time to time to keep them from becoming caterpillars, now I have to continually pluck to keep them from joining up with my hair line.  Yes, my eyebrows and my head hair meet across my temples.  Pull my hair back in a ponytail and I look like Mickey Rooney in "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

I have dark belly hair that I do not even know what to do about, apart from the obvious "don't wear a bikini!"  I really couldn't anyway, I've got so much Down There Hair that the razor burn would be noticeable from the other end of the swimming pool.  Not that I can see over my belly to shave.  I'd have to hand the blades to my husband.

It's not that I don't trust him.  It's just on the list of things I am not particularly inclined to ask my husband to do for me.  I much prefer to ask him to accept me for who I am, hairy beast and all, and demand he tell me that I'm sexy.

I have hobbit feet.  The hair on my toes is curly.  Typical.  I always wanted curly hair.  I obviously forgot to include "on my head, not my feet kthnx" when I was wishing on stars.

My underarm hair grows faster than the weeds in the back yard.  And like the weeds, they seem to be spreading.

But, let's look on the bright side!  It's all VERY SOFT HAIR.  Dark, thick, and luxurious.  Soft as velvet.  And about as densely packed.  I now have a "nap" or "pile" to use textile terms.  There is a reason the cat likes to cuddle with me, I'm fuzzy.  In fact, this is me:

Only I have dark hair.

THEY tell me it's all going to go away after birth.  I'll suddenly start losing the hair on my head.  Bald spots will appear and they might not go away.  Be grateful for the hair you have now!  Revel in it's... uh... soft and furriness!  Baldness awaits you!

Fabulous!  Doesn't pregnancy sound better every time I talk about?  I should give motivational speeches at high schools.

Dear teenage girl thinking of getting pregnant so your boyfriend won't ever leave you - is it worth hemorrhoids, a hairy belly and bald spots??  Is it really?!  'Cause I haven't even gotten to discharge, varicose veins and stretch marks yet.  And that's just while you are pregnant!

Speaking of growing up...

On Sunday we bought ourselves a little trailer.  Putting all the garden rubbish into the back of the car to take to the recycling center/dump was slowly driving my husband insane.  I think it dates back to when DB was younger and his dad did the same because he was too cheap to buy a trailer, instead he'd make 20 trips to the dump in an afternoon.  The young DB would spend all day very carefully loading and unloading trash from the car, because his dad didn't want the interior of the car to get messed up.  "Why don't we have a trailer?" I can imagine him asking in a high squeaky voice (my husband does not have a high squeaky voice now, but he looks like the kind of kid that probably did).  "Be careful, now!  We don't need to have a trailer, son.  You are putting that in the wrong way!  The car is plenty big enough.  Watch out you are going to scratch the upholstery!" his father would reply.  Now, watching my husband first lay out a cardboard base and then carefully pack boxes and bags of weeds and leaves into the car, you can see he's reliving prior traumas.

There is a sort of logic in using the car rather than buying a trailer.  Trailers are not exactly cheap.  Used trailers are available, but for some reason, most Danes selling them think that they don't depreciate in value.  "For Sale - 1 trailer, 20 years old, 1 m x 2 m x 1/2 m (3 feet x 6 feet x 1.5 feet), some rust on the axel, undercarriage, wheel wells, wheels, and hitch.  Wooden slats need replacing.  But it still works, I just used it to take a full load to the dump on Saturday.  3,000 DKK/$600."  Meanwhile the same trailer brand new is 5,000 DKK/$1000.   (By the way, all price conversions are approximations.  The dollar to kroner value fluctuates and since this isn't baking I don't need to be precise.)

But months of determined searching finally paid off.  DB found a used trailer that was in fair condition for 600 DKK/$120, at a used trailer/caravan dealer he's familiar with.  There we discovered that another new used trailer in better condition had just come in and the guy was willing to sell it to us for 700 DKK/$140.  So we now have a trailer.

We also have a caravan and a huge family car.

"Oh my god," said my husband a few months ago when the trailer subject was first raised.  "We've become Danes!"

Never mind that he actually is Danish, the last thing my husband wants to be is like every other Dane, driving the Volvo with the trailer full of garden clippings to the dump and then washing the caravan in the driveway.

"Don't be silly, baby," I said, likewise bristling at the accusation, "we've become my parents!"

My parents used to drive a minivan (now it's an extended cab truck, but it still seats 5 comfortably), have a HUGE trailer that my dad takes to the dump every 6 months (no trash pick up in the country, you shlep your own trash to the dump), and a tent trailer that we've used for family vacations for years.

"Yup, you're right," he paused.  "Thank God!"

I'm not sure how many men thank their lucky stars they've become their in-laws.  I can't imagine it's a large number.

On the way home Sunday night, my husband continued to muse on our encroaching ordinariness.

"Our kid is going to think we are so boring.  We drive a Volvo, take the garden trash to the dump..."

"Sit and watch Barnaby (Midsomer Murders) on Saturday nights," I added.

"Yeah," he cried, "and only 5 years ago I was still going to clubs!"

"Five years ago?  Heck, 8 months ago I was swinging around tent poles while ridiculously drunk, in the desert, in the middle of nowhere, with a bunch of fellow drunk archaeologists," I had to point out. "Besides, our child is also going to think it's completely normal for mom and dad to speak two completely different languages and eat lots of curry and garlic and jalapeños and for mom to every now and then go off into the desert, get really dirty, drink lots of beer, and find old stuff people threw away.  Don't worry, our child's version of normal is not really going to be all that normal." I felt better, reiterating that we are still not normal.

He thought for a moment, "so wait, who was actually there to see you swinging around that pole?"

When I grow up I'm going to eat cake for breakfast!

Actually, I do eat cake for breakfast.  But I always make sure I have a large piece or two of cheese as a side dish.

No, that is not a pregnancy thing, this is something that was agreed upon with my mother when my sister and I were younger - we could have a piece of cake for breakfast as long as we had something with calcium in it.  Or something.  So a piece of cheese and a glass of milk were somehow decided as enough "good" food to counteract the sugar we were happily stuffing into our little faces.  (Despite this, I've only had one cavity.)

I think the poor woman was just glad we'd eat something.  My sister and I were amazingly picky eaters and very difficult to get off to school.  We liked learning, but we hated that we needed to do it so early in the morning.

Anyway, I am now an adult so I *could* leave the cheese out.  But I love cheese and eat it with everything.  If it's not part of whatever I'm eating then I have it on the side.  Cheese is an especially good side "dish" when you are eating something very sweet.  Like pie.  Or, as in this case, cake.

The cake I made over the weekend was Carrot Cake.  I love carrot cake.  I do not understand why Danes insist on having layer cake (not what you are thinking people who do not live in DK, I'll explain later) for birthdays when there is carrot cake in the world.  My first wedding cake was carrot cake.  It was marvelously good.  For my second time at bat the altar I went with layer cake because 1) you are not going to get a good non-layer cake in DK and 2) always get the best cake you can have wherever you are.

(Number one is slightly incorrect, I've had some good homemade cakes from a few proper domestic goddesses who were Danish, so it can happen.  However, only one of them has made a wedding cake before and it was such a trial she swore she'd never do it again.  I don't blame her.)

So what is a Danish layer cake?  Well first you go to the store and buy these cheap thin sponge cakes, usually three come in a pack.  You also buy whipped cream in a spray can, strawberries and bananas (no matter what season it is - buy frozen if you must), butter and coco powder.

***If I ever have to make this cake, I am going to make it from scratch.  There is no call for the use of the nasty pre-made plasticky sponge rounds that they call "kage."  I understand that there are some childhood loves that defy reason as you age - like my deep and abiding love for Kraft Mac n' Cheese, despite it's horribleness - but honestly, this is a crime against nature.  (With any luck I will never have to make a layer cake from scratch.  Sponge cake is a nightmare.)***

You melt butter with some coco power to make a chocolate glaze.  Some sugar may be involved but I'm not always sure.  Cut up strawberries and bananas.  Now assemble thus: one round of sponge cake, pour a bit of chocolate glaze over it.  Layer of strawberries and bananas. Next round of sponge cake.  More chocolate glaze, fruit, and final layer of sponge cake.  More coco glaze.  Now use whipped cream to coat the side so you can't see the layers and for any decoration you may wish on the top.

Nine times out of ten it's as bland as boiled rice.  That last special time is probably when the cake has been made from scratch with fresh ingredients.  Then it's actually really good and you wonder why you keep getting stuck going to birthday parties with sub-standard layer cakes.  This is a mystery of the universe.  You will never receive the answer.  A word to the wise - do not ask your Danish host/hostess for cheese to eat along side your layer cake, they get weird about it.  But if you have layer cake sitting in your fridge, eat a slice of cheddar with it.  It will make it all so much better.

So back to my carrot cake with cream cheese frosting (see, sometimes you CAN put cheese on cake).  I had a variety of recipes to choose from and so I took a little from here and a little from there.  I am thrilled with the cake, but the frosting was WAY too sweet and I cut the sugar significantly.  I'll probably also up the amount of cream cheese because I like my cream cheese frosting to be, well, cream cheese frosting, duh.  But for your sake I give you the recipe as I made it.  Danish equivalents in parentheses.

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• 1 1/4 cups (300 ml) vegetable oil (rapsolie worked fine)
• 2 cups (475 ml) white sugar 
• 2 tsps (10 ml) vanilla extract
• 2 cups (475 ml) all purpose flour
• 2 tsps (10 ml) baking soda (bicarbonate or natron, I believe it is in Danish)
• 2 tsps (10 ml) baking powder
• 1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) salt
• 1 1/2 tsps (7.5 ml) ground cinnamon
• pinch of ground cloves
• pinch of nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) ground ginger
• 3 generous cups (700 to 900 ml is fine) of grated carrots
• 1 cup (250 ml) chopped pecans or walnuts if you wish

For frosting

• 1/2 cup (118 g) butter, softened
• 8 ounces (225 g) cream cheese, softened
• 2 cups (475 ml) powdered sugar* 
• 1 tsp (5 ml) vanilla extract
• 1 cup (250 ml) chopped pecans or walnuts if you wish

*Originally the recipe asked for 4 cups, I used 3.  I suggest you start with 1 cup (250 ml) and work your way up as needed.  Just so you know, Jamie Oliver's recipe uses one cup, which is why I make this suggestion.  Somewhere there is a middle ground.

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 F (175 C).  Grease and flour a 9x13 pan (22 cm x 33 cm? I don't know the measurements of pans in DK - I just go by looks, call me shallow, and my pan looked like a 9x13).
2. In a large bowl beat together eggs, oil, white sugar and 2 tsps (10 ml) vanilla extract.  Mix in flour. baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and ginger.  Stir in carrots.  Fold in nuts if using.  Pour into prepared pan.
3. Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.*  Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.**
4. To make frosting: In a medium bowl, combine butter, cream cheese, powdered sugar and 1 tsp (5 ml) of vanilla extract.  Beat until the mixture is smooth and creamy.  Frost the cooled cake.  Sprinkle with nuts if using.

*The more carrot you add, the more liquid the cake and thus the longer it will take to bake.  Mine took just over 50 minutes.  

**I lack wire racks and I don't have a plate big enough to hold a sheet cake.  I usually ignore this part of any recipe unless I'm making an American style layer cake and need to cut the cake in half to make 2 equal sized layers.  Because I don't have two pans of any shape that are the same size.

OMG do you remember this?

I blame my friend Heather who linked originally to "C is for Cookie" and then I found the Sesame Street playlist.  Apart from my personal anthem, "I love trash" there was also this song.  When I was little I knew the lyrics by heart.  It's a little high pitched, so if your cat runs away and your dog begins to howl, I'm sorry.  But I forgot how completely amazing this song was.  Especially for 1982, when this song first aired.

I don't know how I'm going to do it, but Sesame Street is going to be part of my child's childhood.  Even if I have to pirate every single episode and burn 100 illegal DVD's to do it.

Who's a Domestic Goddess?

Yeah, I'm a Domestic Goddess!

Nigella can totally bite my increasingly padded butt.

Goddesses produce miracles and I have not ever seen one miracle come out of that woman's kitchen.  Unless you call someone else prepping all your food and putting it into little glass bowls so that you can easily grab and dump in "2 teaspoons of extra fancy spice only available at the corner Asian shop that everyone has because they obviously live in a large cosmopolitan city with a thriving immigrant community and that I didn't even have to go get because I have a producer and minions to do these things for me" a miracle.  I do not.

Try making a miracle without a production company, woman!

Did Jesus ring his agent to bring wine to that wedding in Cana?  Nope.  'Cause then it wouldn't have been a miracle, right?  I mean, back in the day when someone showed up with a keg of beer at your house it wasn't a miracle, it was "knowing who to call at 3 in the morning."  Unless of course you don't know the guy and he says something like "I found this keg and I figured you'd like it and the companionship of my 5 underwear model friends."  Then it's an act of God.  But it still isn't you preforming the miracle.

Domestic Goddesses make rolling pins out of wine bottles.  They decide that if they want to have battered deep-fried onion rings and they don't have a deep fryer then by-golly there will be deep frying in a frying pan with less than a centimeter of oil in the bottom BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT YOU'VE GOT.  Domestic Goddesses look at a recipe where 50% of the items are things that can't be gotten where they live and then find alternatives and substitutions and BLOODY MAKE DUE.  Domestic Goddesses  make Greek yogurt by using coffee filters (this actually makes my husband a Domestic Goddess, but I'm sure he won't mind).  Domestic Goddesses have flattened chicken with cans of un-marinated artichoke hearts and then made up a marinade for the artichokes because half of the brilliant dishes that come out of their kitchens begin with a can in the hand and "I've got an idea!"

I'm pretty sure I've said all this before.  But I think it needs saying again.  Lest we forget and all that.

The next time you find yourself standing in front of a stove, exhausted, brushing hair out of your eyes and possibly mixing some ingredient or two into your hair, but still cooking, goddamnit, because ya'll gotta eat - that is the freakin' miracle.

And that makes YOU a Domestic Goddess too!

The Tale of the Mad Baker and the Bad Cat

This story ends happily.  No one dies.  There are cookies.  Find nihilism and philosophical musing elsewhere today.

You were warned.

Once upon a time the Archaeogoddess was happily into her second trimester of pregnancy.  A time known by THEM to be a time full of vim and vigor.  And she decided when waking up on Saturday that the day would end with cookies.  And a pie.

Because why bake 6 dozen cookies if you can bake 6 dozen cookies and an apple pie with a crust topping?

She'd never baked an apple pie with a crust topping, being simply lousy with pastry and lacking a rolling pin.  But how could that possibly dent the enthusiasm?

First there was shopping.  Along with cookies and pie, our heroine decided to make double baked potatoes and saltimbocca pollo.

It all began with brilliant precision timing.  Potatoes in the oven, cookie dough mixed and popped in the fridge, chicken breasts butterflied, flattened, seasoned, topped with parma ham, rolled up and tied with string... and then it started to fall apart.

The potatoes resisted efforts to be baked.

The saltimbocca required much more butter than previously anticipated.  There was just not quite enough butter for pie dough.  But that's okay.  Instead of peeling apples, the Archaeogoddess was poking potatoes with a fork every 20 minutes for another hour.

Finally the potatoes were done and the cookies could be started.  Enter a Bad Cat.

Ever try to bake cookies with an inquisitive cat?  A cat who has two singed whiskers because he got too close to a heat source?  A cat who often leaps before he looks, resulting in falling into toilets, landing in sinks full of water, going head first into a potted plant that was on the counter, and who, while diving into a paper bag, slammed himself into a wall?  Okay, he's not just inquisitive, he's also a little special.

The Bad Cat would not stop trying to get onto the counter where she was rolling cookie balls, the table where she was cooling cookies, and the oven where she was baking.

So the Bad Cat had to be removed from the kitchen.  This meant that the Archaeogoddess was now trapped in the kitchen while the sounds of a displeased Bad Cat and his little paws emerged from under the door.  At least the cookies were safe from his hairball butt, but alas they were not safe from the greedy tummy of the Archaeogoddess.  Despite the recipe distinctly saying "makes 6 dozen cookies" only slightly more than 5 dozen made it into the cookie jars.

Dinner was fabulous.  The Bad Cat pouted and finally left in a huff to get his own dinner at his real home.

Sunday rolled around and once again supplied with more butter, although she forgot the ice cream, the Archaeogoddess began to make her pie.  The small problem of "no rolling pin" became a pressing issue.  The Bad Cat was no help finding an accommodating wine bottle (empty, in the recycling bin) nor in cleaning off the label.  He happily slept on the rocking chair as she attempted to removed the sticky bits with fingernail polish remover (fail) and window cleaner (fail) and when she finally accomplished her task with waterproof eye makeup remover.  But the minute she began to roll out the dough, there he was at her feet meowing and pawing at her legs.  He was again banned from the kitchen.

The pie was amazing.  And there was enough left over dough to make an apple turnover, despite the Archaeogoddess first attempting to eat the dough as it was.

Raw pie crust is not nearly so tasty as raw cookie dough.

That night, having eaten a bit too much sugar for her own good, the Archaeogoddess was sitting on the couch watching old Dr. Who episodes on her computer.  Suddenly the largest spider she's seen outside of the Middle East scuttled across the floor.  Without shrieking (which would wake her husband), she vaulted over the end of the couch and dived through the door to the office.  She then ran through her office, the dinning room and the kitchen (totally expecting to step on or run into another spider) to grab the heaviest glass she could find.  Then it was back to the living room to climb over another couch to sneak up behind the spider and carefully set the glass down over the spider.  It was now trapped in front of the TV.  And the adrenaline rush meant that the Archaeogoddess was not going to be sleeping for a very long time.  Fair enough, the spider had to be watched.  What if it pushed over the glass?  What if it made a break for it?

The hours ticked by.

Then the Archaeogoddess's husband, the Danish Boy, came down to see what had happened to his wife.  Half asleep, he carefully removed the spider and dropped it off outside.  After first swearing he couldn't possibly go back to bed, he did.  While he agreed it was a REALLY BIG SPIDER, it was not exciting enough to keep him up.  The Archaeogoddess was too scared to google spiders in Denmark.  She watched another Dr. Who.

The Bad Cat was absent during the proceedings.

Monday, having only gotten to bed at 6 in the morning, the Archaeogoddess was having a pajama day, complete with Bad Cat and apple turnover.  A knock at the door startled both heroine and cat, who was enjoying a belly rub, having been denied apple turnover yet again.  At the door was the Bad Cat's owner, who proposed the following:

How would the Archaeogoddess like to adopt the Bad Cat?

Absolutely!  What Joy!  

She went back inside and that night they opened up the can of cat food that had been languishing since they'd promised to not feed him anymore.  Suddenly the Bad Cat became the Much More Polite and Calm Cat.  The way to a man's heart is though his stomach - this is true for all species.

Today the Archaeogoddess and the Danish Boy went and bought proper quality cat food for a castrated cat over a year old.  The Archaeogoddess may be stuffing herself with cookies and pie, but someone in this house will be eating correctly.

Pregnancy, it’s a gas!

Oh, I seem to have written that title incorrectly - it should read, “Pregnancy, it’s all about the gas!”

Seriously, why are you always hearing about the swollen ankles?  I mean, I’m sure I’ll complain about the ankles if and when they arrive, but for now I’d like to be able to go about my day without embarrassing gaseous emissions.

Yes, I *am* responsible for global warming.  Methane, you see.  Cows have nothing on me.

It’s been said (yes, by THEM the ever-present THEM that lurks on the internet and spreads conventional wisdom) “you get over being modest once you are pregnant.”  As if modesty were something like the flu, which one needs to “get over” in order to become better.

You don’t “get over” modesty.  You lose it, like virginity.  Hopefully it happens with someone you love, in private, because it often leaves you both slightly uncomfortable and kinda embarrassed.

And there ain’t no way back.

It all began when I announced one day to my husband that he was simply going to have to hear about my poop and that this sucked but I was not going to suffer in silence.  At first he was cool, after all, it was me who insisted on quality alone time in the toilet with the door closed and locked.  It was also me who would flee the bathroom at the first hint that somethime more serious than urine was about to be evacuated from him.

But within a week I think he realized that this was something slightly different.  I wasn’t letting him into the bathroom during these delicate private moments, but I was explaining to him in excruciating detail why I was making such horrible noises while in there.

In a word: constipation.

Why do they not tell girls about this in sex ed?  Why do they not give us all little pills that stop us up for a week so we can enjoy the true miracle of bringing another life into the world?  This should go for men too, who get off far to easy in the reproductive game.  And this is not the only poop-related surprise that pregnancy brings - do not make me talk about labor right now!  We’ll cover that exciting poop-related bit of information once we are closer to D-Day.

Why is it that you hear about glowing skin, thick luscious hair, swollen ankles and food cravings?  Seriously?  Food cravings?  I’ve had to stuff myself with fruit and fiber instead of all the delicious things that I could see dancing before my eyes BECAUSE IT HURTS DAMMIT!

That’s when you start praying for more gas.

And you already have A LOT of gas.  Half the time that you are rushing to pee it is really the fear that the gas cloud will escape while you are surrounded by friends or classmates or colleagues or completely innocent bystanders that makes you scurry.   And the slightest movement could knock it loose!  Bend over to pick up the mail *bam,* reach for the dictionary *bam,* hit “send” on your email *bam!*

You fear the embarrassment, but you also fear losing that precious pressure because you NEED it.  You need it for that long awaited bowel movement.  With enough gaseous build up, it’s possible to expel part of last week’s bran muffin.  Without it… well, there are tears and recriminations, but often not a lot of relief.

But after a while your body starts to even out.  It discovers that you aren’t about to undergo a major famine and that not every last ounce of liquid and nourishment needs to be wrung from lunch before you can pass (heh heh) onto dinner.  The constipation eases (by which you go from hemorrhoid inducing to simply painful) and you no longer break into sweats of terror when looking at a toilet.

But you are still left with the gas. 

And if you are as lucky as I am, then you not only have the embarrassing “we are not going to acknowledge what just happened here and you aren’t going to get angry as we all find somewhere else to be for the next 10 minutes while the air clears,” you also have the “wow, can you say the alphabet too?” burps.

Since my husband thinks that burping is a greater social faux pas than gas, this is the one that drives him up the wall.  Thankfully, I’ve always been a champion burper and have demonstrated this great gift while tossing back beer.  I say “thankfully” because we’ve gone from “Oh my god woman, you did NOT just do that at the table - I DON’T CARE IF YOU SAID EXCUSE ME - that was just disgusting!” to “Feel better?”  The difference is that I now get the burps like some people get the hiccups.  Hours of non-stop burping.  For no particular reason.  I burp when I’m hungry.  I burp while I eat.  I burp for hours after I’ve eaten.  Sometimes I can’t sleep because the pain in my gut grows and grows until I consciously and with great effort, burp.  Which of course causes the Danish Boy to awake from his beauty slumber and with a deep sigh, shuffle off to another room to get some sleep undisturbed by loud intermittent belches.

My explanation, although completely unfounded on facts or even by THEM, is that it’s the baby jumping up into my stomach.  If the baby kicking my bladder like a soccer ball causes me to pee (as THEY say), then obviously burping is caused by the baby playing volleyball with my stomach.

Strange and twisted logic - another great gift of pregnancy.

A lot of homes for Alot

So I live on this small island, right?  Where everyone knows everyone.  So it was only a matter of time before we finally discovered where Alot's real home was.  'Cause, you know, going down and knocking on the door of the house we suspected had us both a little shy.

The following conversation did not take place, but totally could have.  Almost all of these statements have been made regarding the cat situation at one time or another.
DB: Why don't you go, you know more about cats.
AG: Dude, I can't call and order pizza, why would I be able to go knock on someone's door to ask about the cat?
DB: You talk to random people in the supermarket!
AG: You are a journalist, talking to people you don't know is what you do!
DB: I'm waiting for the right opportunity.
AG: Maybe I'll write a nice letter.

Anyway, because I know a woman who knows our two-doors-down neighbor, she acted as the go-between.  It's fine that Alot hangs out with us, but we need to stop feeding him.

1) He's getting full meals at one house already, we're going to over-feed that cat and kill him, since he's not the kind of cat that stops when he gets full.
2) She doesn't really want to lose her pet permanently to us, so if he has to come home from time to time, she at least gets to see him.

Not feeding Alot means we have a noisy cat doing his best to impress upon us the gravity of the situation.  He's STARVING!  Look - WASTING AWAY!  Which would be believable except that during the week he was eating at both houses he got quite the gut.

He's also developed this interesting technique of dragging himself around by his front paws, while the rest of him is stretched out flat on the floor.  He also rolls onto his back and pulls himself along the bottom of the radiators and the couches with his front legs.

I'm pretty sure this is his "I'm so weak, I can't walk - help me, I'm dying!"

I'm not falling for it and I'm not stopping him.  It's the best way of dusting under the couches and radiators that I've ever seen.  And the entertainment value is incalculable.

When he's not begging for food, he's happy to be pet and be played with.  The Ikea paper bag we have lying on the floor is The Best Toy Ever!  He's also really taken to cuddling, so he often lays on me when I'm sitting on the couch and will lay there for hours if I rub his belly.

Nope, it's pretty easy to not be a cat owner.  No food bills, vet bills, litter boxes (which I can't empty anyway, hehehe), etc.  He's just my cuddle buddy.  And free entertainment.

Archaeospawn

You ever have one of those posts/emails/novels in your head that you just keep tweaking and so never get around to writing down?  Or have days where you are full of brilliant wordage and then you blerg all over other people's blogs and FB and write emails to other random people and use up all your brilliance instead of working on the ONE THING YOU MUST REALLY WRITE?

Yeah, this is that post.

Oh the showers I have spent working on this post.  Shall it be serious?  A discussion of decisions I have made in my life after careful reasoned logical thought... and then chucked out the window because I decided to... well, I don't know what the hell caused me to change my mind.  Could be the hormones.

In fact, I think that's what I want tattooed across my belly, in Hindi ('cause it looks cool and I have my shallow moments), "I blame it on the hormones."

Or should I be defensive - all right you lot, this is me and who I am and what I decided to do and so BACK OFF!  I'M HAPPY DAMNIT!  SEE?  HAPPY!!

Did I mention the hormones?  Totally to blame here.

Or should I go for funny?  Funny thing happened about three months ago.  And if you don't think sex is funny, well, you are reading the wrong damn blog, bub.

But while I slaved away in the endless file cabinet that passes for my mind, other things were going on that I wanted to blog about.  Like today, today could be all about the stupid F-16 that keeps buzzing my house.  Where the hell do you think I am, jerkoff?  Israel?

Seriously, if I *was* in Israel, I'd be turning on the news right now to find out if Lebanon has been invaded again.  What the hell is this?  Germany, is that you?  What do you want, we already send all of our organic produce to you, leaving only the questionable meat products to be sold at Netto.  Poland?  I swear to god we sent the plumbers back.

It's probably the entire Danish Air Force circling the country.  (You know, one F-16, repeat fly-overs every 5 minutes because it's a small country?  I made a FUNNY!  LAUGH DAMNIT!)

Hormones, remember?

I could have written this blog post last week and spent this week writing about cognitive bias (ah hah! that's the term I was looking for all week, thank GOD someone finally wrote a post about it so I can stop rocking back and forth in my chair trying to remember the group psychology stuff I had to force into my head a few years back) or even Random Danish Class Stories.

Things like: Did you know there are still people on the planet who do not know about Disney?  I find this hard to believe, since the people in question have children and half of Danish children's TV is American based, ie Disney up the whazoo.  And that it's really hard to explain the Industrial Revolution in baby-Danish.  And that when teaching Danish to asylum seekers from Burma, trying to amaze them with stories about how back in the old days Danes used to have 5-10 children and live in 20 square meter apartments and wasn't that just CRAZY?  Yeah, not going to go as you thought.
Teacher: Five to ten children!  Back then they didn't have birth control.  Now one or two is normal.  Can you imagine, 5 to 10!  How many siblings do you have?
C (from Burma): Eight.
AG: LOL!

But I can't write those posts, not until I get this one done.  See, I set these goals for myself, so that I will accomplish what I need to do before I do what I want to do.

This seems to result in a lot of procrastinating and unwritten blog posts.

I may need to rethink my strategy.

After all is said and done, none of the posts that I was intending on writing have been written and this post was not brilliantly thought out while in the shower.  Or over a peanut butter and nutella sandwich with a side of curried rice pilaf.  Instead it's made up as I go along.

Kinda like my life, really.

And all I really wanted to tell you was that the Archaeogoddess and the Danish Boy are having an Archaeospawn in about 6 months and that this blog might get a bit disgusting with "weird shit my body does to me" and "it can't be any worse, I'm already pregnant" posts.

So mix a cocktail and raise it on high on my behalf... because someone ought to be drunk during my pregnancy, and alas it can't be me.

Pet adoption

I am all for pet adoption.  But you will probably never find me in a shelter looking for a pet.  There are two reasons behind this.

1) I will take every single furry body home with me, regardless of age, sex, political association and whether or not I can afford it.  I'm a total sucker for animals.  Ask me about my soul crushing experience working in a pet store and I'll tell you about how I ended up with a pet ferret who was deaf.  I still miss his fuzzbutt.

2) Pets find me.

Yeah, I think we may have been adopted by Alot.  We didn't really object - heck we bought cat food so we'd have something to give him as a treat (seeing as he's going to drink us out of milk, the hairball).  He likes to come over in the early morning and if my husband is up, he'll let Alot in.  He'll feed the cat and talk to him and play with him until I get up and then it's my turn and somehow I get left with chucking the cat out into the rain before I go to school.  There seem to be no hard feelings, however, because the cat often returns in the evening for more food and love and a place on the couch to sleep while we watch a movie or a TV show.  Sometimes he goes out by himself and sometimes big, mean, Archaeogoddess has to chuck him out the door while sweet innocent Danish Boy looks sad and apologetic.

I still can't imagine that he doesn't have another home.  After all, when the weather is really awful we aren't visited by Alot all that much.  If we were his only refuge, he'd be howling at the door when it rained.

But I think we are holding a close second.

Today he turned up early and instead of only wanting a little bit of milk before laying down on the couch for a nap, he ate 2/3 of a large can of cat food.  He then slept for several hours in a variety of locations, the last being the box of paper we have for the fire, before deciding to go back out in the world to do whatever it is he does when he's not here.

Probably kill birds and roll around in their blood.

I just hope he cleans himself up before he comes back tonight.  Cleaning blood off of a cat is not my favorite meal-time activities.  But you have to do it, right?  I mean, what if he was injured?!  You have to check these things!  It's only after you've parted matted hair and gotten the clotted blood out from between the toes of a loudly purring cat can you start admonishing him on his behavior.

Yeah, the Danish Boy is a sucker for Alot, and so am I.

Goals (and not the sports kind)

"Shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you'll land among the stars!"  I used to like that quote because, hey, moons, stars! It's what girl geeks decorate their rooms with.  Raise your hand if you have an inflatable space shuttle decorating your room!

*crickets*

Okay, glow in the dark stars!

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about!  Y'all my girls! (And geek boys - you be stylin' too!)

Right.  Anyway, the inner geek in me googled this quote so I could use it in this post and then realized, it's a totally stupid quote.  The moon is waaaaay closer than the stars.  If you are aiming for the moon and miss, you better pray you are lucky enough to have fuel for a return trip to earth, otherwise you're going to be drifting in space for a REALLY LONG TIME because stars are REALLY FAR AWAY and as they are VERY HOT SUNS you don't really want to "land among" them.  Really.

But this post is not about astronomy, it's about goals.  And the importance people put on you having lofty goals.

To which I call bullshit.

See, you can have lofty goals, but if you never attain them, well, it's like running a marathon that has no end.  Where's the sense of accomplishment?  Where's the bit where you can pat yourself on the back and say "way to go, you!"  This is why they came up with the "it's not the destination, it's the journey!"

"They" being the folks in middle management that have the inspirational signs hanging in their offices.

There's a special hell for those people.

You're welcome.

Aim lower!  Win every now and again!  Instead of having a list of 20 things you need to do and only accomplishing 10 and then trying to convince yourself that you did your best, make a list of one thing to do and do that one thing (or not, cause why do today what you can do tomorrow?) and then rest on your laurels!  Just don't eat your laurels.  I hear they are poisonous.  Or bits of them are poisonous.  Or maybe they aren't poisonous at all because we do use them in cooking.  So maybe you *should* eat your laurels.  You know what?  Do whatever you want with your laurels.  I won't judge you.

Currently my life goal is to make my husband laugh so hard he cries.  Without resorting to tickling.  'Cause I accomplished that goal already.  (I'm now working on the smaller goal of "touching my husband without tickling him" and it's harder than it sounds, Danish Boy is TICKLISH.)

I had great success a few nights ago when I told him "Denial is a large river in Egypt."  

Sometimes, marrying someone who completely lacks all of your culture references is fantastic.  All those old puns and jokes you have heard since birth?  Oh, yeah, it's like a never ending gold mine of mirth 'round here.

He was not nearly as entertained by my "where I grew up 'debate' is what you stick on your fishing line."  

AG: You know, debate.  De bait.  The bait.  The stuff you put on the hook at the end of a fishing line.  To fish.

DB: Yeah, I got it.  Um, heh heh.

AG: (ooooh shot down!) Moving on...

Like any good comedian, you gotta know your audience.  Only I never claimed to be a good comedian and my audience, as you can see from above, is fickle.  I got a pretty good laugh out of him once for explaining why mosquitos vote for DF (the Danish Peoples Party - think American Tea Party, only with actual power in government).  

So imagine my surprise when I had him sobbing with laughter the other night, by simply reading my very dull Danish class work.  IMPORTANT NOTE: He was NOT laughing at my Danish.  

The set-up is this: boring day in class.  Our assignment for the hour - "Imagine a new student sits down with you in the cafeteria.  What questions would you ask him or her?" Seriously?  A minute ago I was working on possessive pronouns (mine, mine, it's all mine!) and questions in the simple past-tense using inversion (did you take my bike?) and you want me to regress?  To "what is your name?"  Snore-fest!  Bore-apalooza!

Here is my list of questions (English translation in parenthesis):

Hvad hedder du? (What is your name?)

Hvor gammel er du? (How old are you?)

Er du gift? (Are you married?)

Hvor kommer du fra? (Where do you come from?)

Hvor bor du? (Where do you live?)

Hvor længe har du boet i Danmark? (How long have you lived in Denmark?)

Hvad laver du? (What do you do?)

Er du studerende? (Are you a student?)

Hvad læser du? (What do you study? - really "What do you read" but it means study in this context.)

Hvilken sporg kan du taler? (Which languages can you speak?)

Har du familier here? (Have you family here?)

Hvad tænker du om Pia K. og Danskefolkparti? (What do you think about Pia K. [think Sarah Palin, but MEAN and OLD] and the Danish People's Party [mentioned briefly above]?)

Vil du gerne har en kop kaffe med mig? (Will you like to get a cup of coffee with me?)

Hvor købte du den sød jakke? (Where did you buy that sweet [as in "cute"] jacket?)

Hvorfor du løber væk? (Why are you running away?)

Kan du ikke lige mig? (Don't you like me?)

DB started laughing at "Pia K." and promptly died over the "kop kaffe".  Was it the juxtaposition?  Is there a slang meaning here that I don't understand?  (Like asking for a bread roll can be a euphemism for asking someone for sex.)  Or do I have to just accept that I will never understand what is funny to a Dane?

Oh who cares!  I made my husband laugh until he cried!!  I WIN!!  GOAL!!!

Disastrophy in the kitchen... a delayed reaction

I am not a fruit person.  I prefer jelly to jam, I need my juice to come without pulp, and apart from apples, I think fruit looks best in paintings not on my plate.

That being said, I am fully aware that I need to eat my fruit and that putting jelly on your toast does not count towards the several servings you are supposed to have every day.

So I also eat an apple every day.

Yeah, I am the very picture of health.

It's berry season in Denmark.  Or so I read on everyone else's blogs.  Everyone else living somewhere where there are berries.  I'm sure my husband will read this (I show up in Google Alerts - he gets it in his mailbox, I suppose it saves him from having me bookmarked, but where's the romance?) and point out that there are berry bushes all over the island and I'll have to point out that I mean tame berry bushes that don't have thorns and bugs and things.  ANYWAY you'd be expect there to be fresh berries in the supermarkets, right?  Right?

I live on a tiny island at the ass end of nowhere.  It's a lovely island, but not known for it's variety in produce.  Any berries, I imagine, end up on Copenhagen.  

So I acquired frozen raspberries (and by "acquired" I mean I told my husband to go to Netto and not come back without them, he's very good at procuring vittels) so that I could make Red-Gooseberry Clafoutis, but with raspberries.  I used the recipe from Eating In Denmark unfortunately I followed the recipe exactly except for the bit where it says "put all the remaining ingredients into the food processor and blitz" because I don't have a food processor.  I just popped it all in the mixer.  I mean, they both mix stuff right?  Same same!  This turned out to be a major error.

It turns out why food processors and mixers are not the same thing.  Same same but DIFFERENT.

There is a reason you mix the liquids first and then add the dry mix in most recipes where you use a mixer.  Because in a mixer the dry mix will stick to the bottom of the bowl and not become mixed into the batter and you will not discover this until after you pour it into the pan.  You will then have a very terrible mess on your hands because you will at this time also discover that this recipe makes waaaaay too much batter and now you have a pie without enough flour and a pie with too much flour.  Oh, and not enough fruit because I took 12 oz. of fruit to be a weight and dumped them all into one pie pan and not a volume, which I think, in fact, it was supposed to be.  Damn.

So I used the rest of some strawberry jam that I had lying around as the fruit for the second pie.  There were strawberry chunks in it, okay?  It's called thinking outside the box.  Only, because I was in a rush I didn't put it in the pan and heat it up first and this turns out to be important, I think, because while the berries floated in the first pie, the jam stayed at the bottom in the second.

Despite all this the second pie was the better of the two.  But neither were what I wanted.  I wanted something a bit between flan and cheesecake, with a custardy taste.  This did not seem to quite be it.

The final judgment is only evidenced this week - the clafoutis are molding in the refrigerator.  They may have been edible, but that doesn't mean we actually wanted to eat them.

Was it the recipe?  Incorrect assembly of parts?  Or that clafoutis is just not my thing?

I'm going with the third and I think I'll keep my fruit in pies from now on.  And if I want a flan/cheesecake with a custardy taste I'll make flan, cheesecake, or custard... but without any fruit.

The grass is always greener

If you are ever without a topic in conversation in Denmark, may I suggest the weather?  Of course it will follow a set pattern, but this is handy when you have had too many drinks at a party (and by party I mean any get-together of more than two Danes) and find yourself forced to make small talk with the person sitting across from you.  It will go something like this:

Dane: This summer has been better/worse/hotter/colder than last year.

You, the Foreigner: Yeah, what is it about Danish weather?

Dane: Sometimes we have very beautiful summers.

You, the Foreigner: Ah.  (Pause.) But they aren't very long or hot are they?

D: But one year it rained the whole summer.

YtF: Ah.  (Pause.) You've got some pretty long dark cold winters.  February is particularly grim.

D: There is no such thing as bad weather in Denmark, only bad clothing choices.

YtF: Oh, I'd beg to differ.  I'd go so far as to say a summer without a single sunny day is by definition a whole lot of bad weather.

D: This is why we leave our children outside to "air."  You will get used to it too.

At which point you flee for the bathroom and as you stare at the blurry reflection above the sink, it occurs to you that the weather conversation was pretty one sided and that it could have gone like this and no one would have noticed: 

Dane: This summer has been better/worse/hotter/colder than last year.

You, the Foreigner: I think frogs are pretty cute.

Dane: Sometimes we have very beautiful summers.

You, the Foreigner: But I don't know that I'd kiss one.

D: But one year it rained the whole summer.

YtF: So it's a good thing I'm not looking for Prince Charming.

D: There is no such thing as bad weather in Denmark, only bad clothing choices.

YtF: Hell, I'd settle for Prince Ready and Available For Rent.

D: This is why we leave our children outside to "air."  You will get used to it too.

If you ever want unsolicited advice from a Dane regarding clothing choices or how to get used to the horrible seasons in Denmark (laughingly called "spring," "summer," "fall," and "winter" but are really "cold," "not so cold," "cold again," "holy jesus it's cold AND dark"), just turn to the Dane and say "gosh, I'm cold!"

Me, I've been cold since mid-August.  As a foreigner this means I get Danes telling me, "oh, you aren't cold now!  Wait until December!"  Pshaw!  I've been through enough winters in DK to tell you, December is NOTHING, it's February you have to watch out for, fool!  Also, I'm not some noob who's brand new to this cold weather stuff.  I've lived in New England.  It starts snowing there in November and doesn't melt until April.  But just because it's colder there does not make me any less cold RIGHT FREAKIN' NOW, MAN!

'Course in New England they have this odd concept of time.  There's a saying, "if you don't like the weather in New England, wait five minutes."  From experiencing New England's weather, I can tell you that those"five minutes" takes approximately three months.  This must be why New Yorkers freak out if you tell them that another subway will be arriving in 10 minutes.  I mean good God, that's really half a year from now!  They also like to say they have "real" seasons in New England.  Yeah, really bad ones.  There's "still cold," "horribly hot and humid," "hey, those were a nice two weeks," and "blizzards."

California has two seasons, if you can call them that.  There's "hot" and "not hot."  Or "not raining" and "raining."  The exception is San Francisco.  While the rest of California is experiencing "hot," San Francisco is having "what lovely weather we are OH SWEET MOTHER OF GOD IT'S COLD."  This is The Fog.  The Fog is why so many people around the world have San Francisco sweatshirts.  No one who lives outside the city is ever truly prepared.  The Fog is insidious and rolls up and over the city like a glacial steamroller.  It is damp.  It is cold.  It is unescapable.  It happens in the season we in the Northern Hemisphere expect to call "summer."  It is the reason you see all those who live in the city walking around during the sunny summer afternoon with fleeces tied around their waists.  The Fog is coming.

Of course, take a Dane to these locations and they will snort at the weather and insist that really, you just have to get used to it (except when it's hot, because then they collapse and die because they keep drinking beer instead of water and dehydrate - true story).  If human evolution had been left up to Danes, we'd still be living in caves and without fire.

Lene: I am kold.

Ole: It not kold now.  You wait til snow kom.  Den it is kold.

Lene: I could invent fire.

Ole: Stupid woman.  You get tough now.  Or go move south with Sven.  

But since I've been blessed with a higher intellect, when cold, I build a fire.

Yeah baby, that's what I'm talkin' about!

One last hurrah!

The weather has been less than conducive to me leaving my home of late.  And when I do leave it's with long underwear, heavy coat, mittens and a knit hat.  But Saturday was one of those sunny days where if you stand in the sun, it feels rather pleasant and since there were few clouds, it did seem that the day would be one to be out and about in, minus the winter gear.

We went to Ærø Naturpark and "took a little tour" as they say in Danish.  Only with Danish words.  Usually.  Sometimes they'll say it in English, a direct translation of a saying in Danish and sometimes this makes no sense.   Although the saying "fit for fight" is apparently something the Brits say and the Yanks do not, so my confusion is sometimes completely cultural and I resort to the smile and nod and slowly back away.

Right.

The Danish Boy and I took a picnic and as we packed it my dear husband looked at what I was making and sadly said, "I should have just asked you to make mine for me."  This is because he fell back on his Danish upbringing and made a "food pack" - regarding which the non-Danes living in Denmark will all agree is a travesty unto culinary science.  I meanwhile whipped up a salami-cream cheese-jalapeño sandwich, apple, green olives, bag of popcorn, and cookies.  I didn't have time to boil any eggs, alas.

I then distinctly remember saying, "honey, could you grab the camera."  However, when I turned to him at the pond where the frogs were being so cute and photographic and there he was standing there with the picnic bag but NOT the camera... I cut my loses.  He had, after all, remembered to take the food.  Priorities people, food always trumps all in my book.

But it was a lovely day.  We hiked up and down hills, over some fences, through some fields and was molested by nary a cow.  There was a distinct lack of cows, in fact.  But cow pats we saw a plenty.

DB: Watch out, there's poop right here.
AG: Ummhmm.
DB: Oh, here's some over here.  And some right there.  Look, right there.  Watch where you step.
AG: Well it IS a cow pasture.
DB: I'M ONLY TRYING TO HELP YOU!
AG: OKAY!
*pause*
AG: But it IS a cow pasture.  Cow poop is everywhere and you don't need to point it out to me.  I'm already on the look out.

May I remind my gentle readers that I grew up in the country and he grew up in suburbia.  If anyone knows cow poop in this relationship, it is I.

After lunch we picked up some asshat's beer cans some asshat had left behind.  Hey, Asshat - it's a nature park.  Pick up your damn trash!  Besides, those cans would have been worth a few kroner if you hadn't smashed them to hell and back!  Asshat.

We then came across a large wood pile.  The DB tried to figure out how we could sneak our Volvo into the field in the dead of night and make off with the wood.  He had to give up the plan, there's no way the surrounding farms would not hear us trying to maneuver the car into position.
AG: You're too close.
DB: I am not.
AG: You're going to hit it.
DB: I have loads of space.
*clunk*
AG: I told you you were going to hit it but OH NO you never listen to your wife and who's always right, I'm always right.
DB: I barely touched it!

So instead we found ourselves some nice walking sticks.  And if they were 6ft/2m tall and as thick as your upper arm... well, they were just really SERIOUS walking sticks.

Disaster Crepes...

The problem with having a run of good fortune in the kitchen is that the longer you go without completely and utterly screwing up a meal the more disappointed your food critic spouse is when it all goes ass-end up.

I was still riding high on the risotto I'd whipped up out of random things found in my kitchen (a favorite risotto recipe of mine, by the way) and then managed to pull off a great stew of cheap ingredients and a liberal application of Tabasco sauce.  Who's the kitchen goddess?  Oh, I do believe I am the kitchen goddess!

But pride cometh before the fall...

Which is a stupid saying.  Who the hell has pride after they fall?  I mean, generally speaking, falling on my face does not instill me with a sense of pride.  Way to point out the obvious, you stupid idiom!  It's like "it's always in the last place you look."  Of course it's in the last place you look!  When you find it, you stop bloody looking, don't you?  Even if you found whatever you were looking for in the first place you looked, it would still be the last place you looked, now wouldn't it?

I can see you are highly elucidated by my ingenious logic.

Although I am not sure if a person can be elucidated.

Anyway.

Since there was left-over stew I was thinking, "Ah ha!  I can make this meal go even further by having dumplings on less stew, thus stretching the stew for two extra nights instead of just one!"

Small problem.  Stew is magic.  No matter how much liquid you think you have when you put the stew into a tupperware container, there is less when you reheat it.  Secondly, dumplings act like a lid on reheating stew, making the stew hotter under the dumplings than you may realize.  Thirdly, once you start cooking your dumplings in your stew, you can't stir your stew.

You see where this is leading.  I burned the reheated stew.  And it turns out that my husband is less than impressed with dumplings.  Biscuits, yes, he digs biscuits.  But his dismay was apparent as he pushed the dumpling around his bowl with his spoon, tapping it from time to time as if wishing it to magically become a potato, the majority of which were now cemented to the bottom of the pot by a mortar of burnt beans and dissolved carrot.  Next time, he asked, could we just have the stew as it is?  It was just fine that way, he said.

Two words: Justifiable Homicide.

I really could have used the moral support of my beloved here.  Not the cranky person who sat himself down to dinner after standing in the dinning room doorway for several seconds loudly sniffing the air.  Yes, Dear, I Burned Dinner.  Don't Make Me Get Your Slippers And Shove Them Up Your Butt.  How About THANK YOU OH MY DARLING GODDESS FOR PREPARING THIS MEAL FOR ME ON LESS THAN 5 DKK THUS LETTING ME BUY MORE RUGBRØD FOR MY LUNCH TOMORROW?!  If You Don't Appreciate Dinner, There Is Always Toast.

This morning, keen to provide a fine repast, I decided to make crepes.  I've had success with crepes in the past here. But in that post I did mention my problem with the melted butter.  I *know* I had a problem with the melted butter.  It clumps when you pour it into cold milk.  I tried mixing the batter in a different order today and it was even less successful than all of my previous attempts.  And when you use your last two eggs to make the batter, do-overs are NOT an option.  WHY DID I NOT LISTEN TO MYSELF?  "Next time I think I'll use oil" I wrote on my blog.  "USE OIL" I had scrawled in large letters across the recipe.  But I haven't tested the batter with oil.  What if it tasted weird?  Oh, it wasn't that difficult to make with melted butter, was it?  Of course not!  So I have to spend a few more minutes mixing it...  FU, AG.  FU.

On the plus side, they were edible.  None fell on the floor.  But worth the tears, the anguish, and the sore arms from beating clumpy batter?  Worth the burnt fingers as I tried to flatten out the folded and bunched up crepe piled in a small discarded heap in the pan?  Worth my husband coming in and saying, maybe he should make some toast?  No.  Nothing is worth that.  Nor was the 7-10 I would get if I beaned my boy on the head with the skillet.  Or so I kept repeating as I flipped another lumpy crepe.

"Did you make Dessert Crepes or Dinner Crepes?" people always ask.  As if the sudden realization that I made the wrong recipe at the wrong time of day would somehow explain why hot melted butter would congeal into small cold butter lumps when poured from a hot pan into a cold batter as chemistry would dictate, rather than seamlessly blending into the mix.

I made neither this morning.  I made Disaster Crepes.  And as a service to mankind I will refrain from passing on the recipe until I finally make a successful Damn Crepe.

I know I haven't been writing very often...

But Danish really rots the brain.

That and I'm expending considerable amounts of rant time on the Coat Factory Cultural Center with Associated Prayer Space.  Yeah, it's not as catchy as "Ground Zero Mosque" but has the bonus of being ACCURATE!

But I do have to mention one of my dear Danish classmates.  She's a sweet and loving person who is probably the least educated individual I've ever met.  She's really open to learning new things, but sometimes the mind is just baffled by what she doesn't know.

Things like: there are more than 40 spoken languages in the world.  Or that Chicago is in the US, but Canada is another whole country north of the US.  See Canada, no one believes you are another country.  Just give in and become our 51st state, okay?

She discovered Google Translate the other day and was so excited.  She just had to tell us all about it.  I was bemused.  But then one of my other classmates had also never heard of it before, so it was a good thing that I know how to use the Google and I could get the address for them.  And thus I learned several things that day in Danish class, like "the internet is not nearly universal as we'd like to think" and "Google has got to step up it's advertising."

She's also a big fan of the US.  Some of her family lives in Florida and some in Illinois.  Today she proudly told me that all Latinos love America.  My Danish teacher asked if this included Cuba and Venezuela.  Okay, okay, she says, but other than Cuba and Venezuela, everyone else loves America.  She has the most adorable innocent view of my homeland.  A very "An American Tail" kind of view.  Any second during class I half expect her to launch into "there are no cats in America and the streets are paved with cheese!"  What, does no one else remember that movie??  Sigh.  Y'all missin' out, y'hear.

Anyway, I hate to burst her bubble, because it's just nice to meet someone who actually likes my country and how, exactly, am I supposed to explain that we're a country of assholes and dicks?  It would be like kicking a puppy!

She really makes Danish class worth going to.  You never know what she's learned or what she wants to know about or what pronouncement she has regarding something she's been thinking about (like the "everyone loves the US").  Today's question - if you are a lawyer in the US, can you practice law in DK? She was very surprised to hear the answer is no.

Alas, she's about to stop Danish class.  She's 8 1/2 months pregnant.  Yeah, girlfriend is about to pop, she's HUGE!  I'm not sure when she'll be back and I will certainly miss her antics.  My husband wonders what I'll have to talk about now at dinner.  The other students in class are certainly going to have to step it up a bit.  Although today I did learn a bit about the international opium trade.  This will have to be investigated further.

On a completely unrelated note, I'll end with a funny.

The horror, the horror...

I hate spiders.

I really really hate spiders.

I hate them because they scare the heebee-geebees out of me and I don't like to be scared.  

I hate their little beady eyes and their fangs and their eight legs all moving independently of each other.  I hate the way that they shoot sticky web out of their butts.  I hate how they scuttle - zip, pause, zip, pause.  I hate how they weave their webs with their back legs while they clean their mandibles with their front legs.  All while watching you.  I hate their multi-jointed legs with too many knees and their bloated abdomens and their little horrible heads.

I hate spiders.

I suffered some spiders in my home for the last few weeks because I wanted something to take care of the mosquito problem and the gnat pestilence that followed.  Despite there being a huge number of bugs in the house, all of the spiders seem to be dying of starvation while the bugs died of old age.  I have never seen such a useless branch of evolution in all my life.

And then, last week, the most horrible species of spider began showing up in the house.

Okay, no, they aren't venomous (nothing in Denmark is venomous other than the Danish People's Party) and I've been told the whole "it's more scared of you than you are of it."  But their brains are the size of of a 12 point Times New Roman period!  That's not the brain of something that fears or gets angry.  They are going to bite everything because anything could be a threat or possibly lunch!  Why ponder the existential difference between a mortal threat and the large warm bodied thing that bumped your web?  I doubt they refer to wikipedia to decide if what they see before their tiny eyes is edible or dangerous.

Get it, there is no fear or aggression in a spider, just biting!!

So when this very large, very active species of spider began invading my home every evening, I got rather upset about it.  They are about the size of a Snapple lid or a round Danish plug (that's including the leg span).  They have orange knees.  They have two huge black fangs.  And they love to bungee jump from the ceiling on silken thread, legs extended, probably shouting "weeeeeeee!"  We had five of them in the bathroom one night, swinging from the light fixtures and the air vent.

If they stay still I try to wait until my husband wanders by and I can borrow his spider wrangling skills to de-arachnid whatever room I wish to be in, but over the last week he's been very busy wrangling a larger pest: possible tenants for a room in our apartment in Århus.  Over 200 phone calls, text messages, and emails.  Calls coming in before 8 am until after 10 pm.  Ugh.

But the spiders....

So I can't always wait for him to finish sending an email downstairs.  Especially if I need to pee and there is a bouncing spider in my way.  This has resulted in an increasingly frustrated husband who wanted to know why I didn't just come back downstairs and use the spider-free toilet.  Because, I patiently told him, I had to keep an eye on the spider until he got rid of it.  WHAT IF IT HID WHILE I WAS AWAY??  It could TOTALLY come back and get me in the middle of the night!

Every night for a week I had a grumpier and grumpier man trudging upstairs to answer my calls for assistance.  He wanted to know why I couldn't just wait for him to be done with his stuff downstairs and I wanted to know why he couldn't just come upstairs with me, remove the spiders, and then go back to do whatever it was that he wanted to do.  I like to read in bed for a bit before turning off the light and this is the only way to not inconvenience him when he'd like to go to sleep.  His sighs of frustrations and annoyance could be heard every night as he trudged up stairs to yet again remove more spiders from the bathroom.

It may have gone on like this for quite a while, but then, just a few nights ago, as we were washing dishes, a spider bungeed down from the cupboard just inches from my face.

Do you know what happens when the Archaeogoddess is startled?  I scream and jump.

Do you know what happens when the Archaeogoddess is startled by a large nasty spider inches from her face?  There was a piercing shriek from the depths of my soul.  I think they heard me in Berlin.  I shot straight up in the air and then levitated backwards about three feet before landing with a resounding thump.

My husband was standing next to me at the time.  He was, shall we say, startled by my reaction.

DB: OHMYGOD!!  What the hell?!

AG: *bursts into hysterical tears and point at the spider*

And after that, not another frustrated sigh was heard from his lips.  He goes upstairs every night before I do to check for spiders in the bathroom and the bedroom.  He hurries to my aid if I holler "honey, there's a spider in here" and he has a special spider-catching-cup and lid both upstairs and downstairs, to quickly and safely capture and remove the spider from my presence.

Apparently, 7 years of me telling him that I'm scared of spiders did not really sink in until I had a proper hysterical breakdown.  I guess he finally realized that if his wife, who can calmly bandage wounds on herself and others, give injections, remove dead rats from traps, move to a country where she couldn't understand a single word, who in many other ways is very very brave, is THAT scared of spiders, then she is REALLY FREAKIN' SCARED OF SPIDERS!

Finally, the kitchen is again mine!

No matter how great a relationship you may have with your mother-in-law, admit it, you breathe a deep sigh of relief when she goes home.  Especially if she's been visiting for a week.

Now don't get me wrong, my mother-in-law is a lovely woman with a big heart.  She'd never knowingly cause grief or harm.  She's the kind of woman that would give you the shirt off her back if you are hungry, is always there with a shoulder to cry on when you are cold, and will throw open the curtains for you when you have a migraine.  And sometimes if you just have to go into another room and count to ten your blessings, well, I guess you just have to remember that she means well.  She really really means well.

This past week was not without it's amusements.

For instance, she arrived with a cooler FULL of fish.  Four different types of fish.  In large frozen blocks.

There were just two small, itsy, miniscule little problems with this.

1) My MIL forgets that I am not a big fan of fish.  We do this every time we meet.  The only thing I think we talk about is my so-called picky food habits. It's an unfortunate coincidence that I am not a fan of all of her favorite foods.  Alas, her favorite foods are bony fish, pickles, and cheese that smells of old socks.  Mine are cheese enchiladas, beef tacos, salsa and guacamole.  She likes red beets and oranges and I like broccoli and apples.  Anyway, I do eat some fish.  I'll eat pickled herring, salmon, tuna, sushi, anything deep fried (I do love me some fish and chips); generally anything that is bone free and marinated in something.  I, frankly think this is quite a lot of fish.  But seeing as how my MIL keep serving smoked mackerel and some flat bumpy bottom feeding fish (twenty minutes of de-skinning, de-boning, de-oh-my-god-the-bumps-are-also-bone, for three bites of the blandest white fish I've ever had to mush in my mouth), I can see why she thinks I'm picky as I turn down the opportunity for seconds and have more boiled potatoes.

By the way, I am TOTALLY potatoed out.

2) We have no freezer.  My MIL helped my husband move in and was aware of this, but seemingly forgot when faced with the multitude of fish available for purchase.

So suddenly we had gobs of fish that had to be eaten as soon as possible.

Oh, and a clogged drain.

Have I mentioned the clogged drain?

Yeah, so we discovered we had a partially clogged drain the evening she arrived with her mother (who I think really wins the award for picky-eater of the year).  We also discovered the sink leaks when it gets filled up with water.  Warnings were passed around.

The next day... well, alas, I cannot abide the smell of defrosting fish (I was effectively banned from my own kitchen by my gag reflex for a week, not to mention by a MIL who was insisting that she wanted to be helpful and would do all the cooking - which, while I don't want to sound ungrateful, is never happening again, I cannot survive for a week on new potatoes and butter) and so when my husband arrived home from work, he found his mother in the kitchen with a sink completely full of fish bits, potato skins, and water, which was leaking all over the floor.  She continued to bustle about cooking while my husband frantically cleaned up and I shouted helpful encouragement from two rooms away.

Thankfully, the landlord, who was around that week fixing the deck, stopped by to say hello and promised to send us a plumber the next day.  That plumber was right on time and had the right tools in hand.  I have never been so happy to see a fat Danish man in overalls in my life.  He was a vision of beauty!

The rest of the week passed as one might expect: misunderstandings, more fish, cleaning up the kitchen after my MIL, an increasingly frustrated husband (he has a hard time with people that won't realize that Americans have a whole separate culture that is very different from Danish culture), more fish, a discussion of why I put blue cheese in my salad (I wonder what would have happened if I'd gone the whole nine yards and put dried cranberries, walnuts, sliced apples and portobello mushrooms in as well), more fish, an exhausted husband (who couldn't sleep as he tried to figure out why his mother would try to convince me that taking a walk outside would improve my hay-fever [in full swing during harvest season] when she's supposed to be a certified nurse), and finally more discussions about Things That I Just Do Differently.

Things That I Just Do Differently
- eat avocados with olive oil, salt and pepper rather than with shrimp and lemon
- drink water with a slice of lemon (well, couldn't let the lemon that came with my avocado go to waste)
- drink coffee with milk and sugar instead of black
- I don't bike, I walk to get places or I drive BUT I DO KNOW HOW TO RIDE A BIKE, I'm just not a New York City messenger boy (ie how Danes ride bikes)
- I rinse my dishes before washing them in soapy water
- I do NOT put sugar in my garlic-herb vinaigrette dressing, I never have, I never will, and telling me that it makes it less sour is EXACTLY WHY I don't do it, but I accept that your palette is different from mine and I urge you to make your own dressing if you think it may be a little too strong
- I eat breakfast differently (and this was without her catching me making crepes, French toast, or a full English breakfast)
- I eat lunch differently (I rarely do a Danish lunch, I make sandwiches and eat apple slices with cheddar cheese)
- I don't drink coffee after noon
- there are only a few things on this planet I will not eat for politeness-sake, one of these is pickles (projectile vomit occurs within 30 minutes of ingestion) and the other is shrimp - I can eat around shrimp, but I can't eat around pickles
- when I'm having a bad allergy day, I take myself as far as I can from any source of allergen, lay down, stuff tissue up my nose and wait for the medication to kick in rather than go for a walk through the clouds of pollen

But it's all over now.  I have my kitchen back.  I can make Asian, Indian, Mexican, and Middle Eastern food.  I can make cake and cookies and hot chocolate.  Only first I have to be creative with pounds of boiled new potatoes...

How to get hate mail without really trying...

Your humorous Archaeogoddess will be back soon.  Until then I give you my thoughts about a recent article in USA Today - NYC panel clears way for mosque near Ground Zero.

There was some discussion on the interwebs about whether or not this was a good thing or a bad thing.   I seem to be once again in the minority, but what else is new?  Sure you can send me angry emails or leave argumentative comments, but as William McAdoo said (awesome name, by the way) "It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in an argument."  If you think I'm ignorant, then there's no point in arguing with me and since I'm bound to think that you are ignorant if you tell me I'm an idiot, then I'm not going to be drawn into an argument with you.

Here's my two cents:

I have absolutely no problem with this center being built.  It's two blocks away - in NYC, that's practically on the other side of the island.  According to the article, it's the city officials that are saying the decision was based on freedom of religion and property laws, the organization that is responsible says it's a space for moderate muslim voices.  It's already a prayer space and will include a memorial to those who died on 9/11 - who were of many nationalities and many religions.

People are forgetting that it wasn't Muslims or Islam that attacked the city that day, but a group of men with hate in their hearts.  Do we ban churches from being built near abortion clinics that were bombed or in downtown Oklahoma City?  No, because the so-called Christians who carried out those attacks of terror are not seen as representative of their religion, but rather for what they are - fanatics, lunatics, and evil people perverting a message of peace into one of war against other human beings.   We don't ban Germans from the US because of Hitler and the Nazis, we recognized that sharing a nationality or religion with an evil person does not make everyone of that nationality or religion bad.  I exhort you to remember with regret how we interned the Japanese-Americans in WWII (a national shame that should never be forgotten and never again repeated), and yet we seem to be once again prepared to trample over the rights of American citizens because of a lunatic living in a cave ranting to the world by cassette tape!

Let us take a moment to remember what really happened on 9/11 - 19 men, following the rambling speeches of a sociopath, murdered 2,976 people from over 70 (some say over 90) nations, most of them civilians.  They claimed we brought this upon ourselves because we have a base in Saudi Arabia, support Israel, and had sanctions against Iraq.  The casualties from the other countries apparently brought it on themselves by working to provide for their families.

They may have hoped to provoke a world wide Islamic uprising, but instead the attacks received condemnation by the vast majority of the planet, despite the videos of some idiots celebrating.  Even though these evil, mad men have issued fatwa after fatwa, saying it is the duty of every Muslim to kill Americans, outside of the theater of war, how many Americans are targeted and killed by Muslims?  Very very few.  This is not a war between the US and Islam.  Being a muslim does not make you an enemy or even a fundamentalist sympathizer.  Muslims in America have born a multitude of hate crimes and 10 years of discrimination based on their religion.  People of Middle Eastern decent have also suffered for the color of their skin, no matter what religion they practice.  Building a community center to serve the needs of the American citizens who are Muslim in no way should be seen as a validation of the fanatics who erroneously claim to be true believers.  Instead it shows that the US is committed to maintaining its values and the rights of its citizens despite the perversions of a few.