Vacation in Denmark: Part I - The Summer Home

I am opposed to summer homes.

1) It just seems so wrong to me that some people are stuck living in poorly maintained, government-sponsored housing and others have multiple little homes scattered about the country in a land that likes to brag about how no one has too much and no one has too little.

2) They are a blight on the landscape.  Often in the prettiest parts of Denmark, you round the corner and instead of the sweeping vista of the ocean or lakeside you left the confines of the city to visit, there are dozens of little houses one after the other, as far as the eye can see.   Some of these “little” homes are larger than the one I live in now.  Some of them have indoor swimming pools!  Indoor swimming pools… next to the beach!!

3) People only stay in them for a few weekends out of the year, at most a week or two, because in addition to having a summerhouse, most Danes will also travel abroad during their 6 weeks of vacation. And due to legislation, you can’t live in them year round… unless you are retired.  So any grand plan of “taking back” the best of Denmark by moving to these houses can’t be realized for some time yet.

Hate them!  *spit* *spit*

So imagine the ethical quandary of borrowing one of my FIL’s summer homes (why yes, I did say “one of” and “homes” - you may join me in the spitting now) for a few days.

How can I enjoy my vacation knowing that I’m staying in a *spit* summer home??

Should I try to deflect my guilt by saying “oh, but I didn’t build it, and it would still be standing even if I didn’t stay in it” or “if no one uses it then it really is a waste of materials and environmental destruction” or “it’s cheaper than staying in a hotel” because we had to head up north for a few days and therefore had to overnight somewhere?

In the end, it really was about sucking up my pride (we be po’ and needed the free shelter) and deciding that I would try to see if I could find a bright side to this whole summer home thing.  Maybe that’s also compromising my ideals… but at least I could now say I’ve tried it.

The house is nestled in the dunes up on the northwest coast.  Stunning scenery. 

The View.
Look, there's even someone else's summer home to look at and enjoy!

Most of the homes were hunkered down among the dunes, but the FIL’s stood proudly on one of the highest around.  Gorgeous views (see above).  A few of the homes had sod roofs, so they blended in with the environment.  Most of the homes were grey, black, or brown - but a few were a cheeky red.

"Ours" is Baby Poop Brown... a very natural color.

The summer home had a nicer kitchen than I currently have.   There was a dishwasher that I totally forgot to use until right before we left, much to the DB’s annoyance.  And a nicer bathroom.  A MUCH nicer bathroom.  Heated floors, ya’ll.  Oh, and a second bathroom that I used, just because I could.  The furniture was fancier (well, we did get ours from the side of the road, so that’s not really saying much). I’m sure this was designer furniture. There was suede involved. I kept the sheets covering most of it for the duration.  God forbid I get baby vomit or breast milk on something!!  Three closet sized bedrooms, but I guess the idea is that you spend most of your time in a bedroom sleeping, so you really only need enough space for a bed.

All in all it was a nice, tidy house - well designed - in a spectacular location.

I would be finding bits of this dune in my shoes for the next month.

Grrrrrr.

I read in the tourist brochure that there are something like 40,000 summer homes in the area.  In the little area we were, there were probably a few thousand.  A few thousand; right in the dunes.  Only occupied for a few days a year.  Every house could be ripped out and turned into a campsite!  And you wouldn’t need 40,000 campsites, so much of the land could go back to being dunes - an ecosystem that is ridiculously fragile in even the best of times!  And you wouldn’t need to be rich to visit - camping is dirt cheap.

And here you find the illusive Danish Summer Home - Danicus sommerhusetus - in it's native habitat.
Notice how it hunkers down in the dunes, erecting a flagpole to indicate it's receptiveness to reproduction.

*Deep breath*

So I enjoyed my few days, pretending I was one of the many Danes who vacation this way every year.  To be fair, there were some perks to this form of vacation. There was zero set up involved.  It was warm and dry even when it rained.  There was a lot of space and I didn’t have to go outside to go to the bathroom.  Another plus was that I could put the Spawn down on the floor and not worry about her eating the grass or something.  Finally, because it isn’t ours we didn’t have to do any maintenance or pay for our time there (except for the amount of electricity and water that we used… which was negligible).  But it was ridiculously far from the beach - the walk about killed me, there and back.  It’s also ridiculously far from everything else, so there’s not much to do other than sit in the house and look at the view.  It is only accessible by car, so good luck trying to be eco-minded about your vacation.  And it took forever to clean and leave because everything must be washed, vacuumed, disinfected and scrubbed. 

Would I buy a summer home?  NO.   Even if everyone in the world had lovely place to call home AND a summer home and you could promise me that it had no impact on the ecosystem.  Who the hell wants to vacation in the same spot all the time?  And why the hell would you want another house to take care of?  I mean, we didn’t have to do any maintenance, but we still had to clean it from top to bottom.  Nice way to end a vacation.

So, no matter which way you cut it - the summer-home vacation is not for me.

The beaches of northwest Denmark are a sort of savage monotony.
Kierkegaard begins to make sense.

Done and Dusted!

I passed my driver's test and am back behind the wheel... legally!

And I did the hair chop!

From long hair....

To pixie!

Why yes, we ARE just that cute!

Alas, that's not going to be the picture on my driver's license.  Instead it will be a pudgy-pregnant-Archaeogoddess-direct-from-snow-storm-to-photo-chair photo taken months ago when I first started this whole crazy process.  Oh if only I looked glowing in that photo, instead of sweaty.  It's melting snow, dammit!  I swear!!

Well, it's a forgone conclusion that you will look horrible on your driver's license, right?

Hair today, gone tomorrow

It's taken a while, but after days, weeks, MONTHS even, of my bitching, whining and moping - I've finally got a hair appointment.

It's coming off, ladies and gentlemen.

Every now and again I grow my hair out, probably just to remind myself how damned annoying it is.

But during pregnancy and the first month or so of mommyhood, long hair just sort of works.

1) The hair was thicker and more glorious than ever.
2) My skin and scalp were way less oily and icky than ever.

It was the meeting of two perfect moments.  Yes, for a while there, I had lots of glorious hair that could go days without being washed.  I was sexy, divine!

Those days... alas... are gone.

First of all, the lovely hormones that keep your hair from falling out are gone (or the hormones that make your hair fall out are back... or... well, hell, it's different) and then all the hair that should have fallen out, falls out.

It's like Margo when they took her out of Shangri-la.  (Alas there is no good image to go with that...)

I'm going bald.  In parts.  Okay, just in the front.  And it's only noticeable when I pull my hair back.

But I have to pull my hair back all the time or it gets in my eyes.  Balls.

It doesn't help that it tangles just by looking at it.  I pull more hair out just trying to brush it, let alone when I try to get it up into a pony tail.  Who knew that hair, nicely brushed, would knot THAT EASILY when you try to wrestle it into a band.  I have broken my brush TWICE.  And my hair is only just past my shoulders in length.

That's reason number 2.

Meanwhile my application to OPEC as a new member-state is going well.  My skin will solve the energy crisis, as soon as I figure out how to get it off my face and into my car...

Thankfully, since I am able to take long showers every day, I can keep my skin and hair clean and healthy and...

*howling with laughter* I'm sorry *choke* Seem to have lost my poker face somewhere...

My face rivals that of a teen on prom night and my scalp... my scalp has PIMPLES, y'all!  Running my fingers through my hair means... ugh, I'm not even going to go there.

Yes, I'll talk about poop and boobs and bodily functions, but there are some realms I will not enter.

I hate pimples.  And they are in my hair.  That's reason number three.

So the hair has to be cut off.  I can wash it faster that way, getting the soap right down to the scalp.  I will not need to even look at conditioner (which I can't use right now if I want my hair to even look slightly clean), and it'll dry faster without any help from me, because I don't have the time for a hair dryer.

But my child is going to lose one of her favorite toys.

I feel kinda guilty.

She uses my hair as a rope to swing from and as a chew toy.  She likes to shove a whole handful in her mouth and suck on it to calm herself.  And I'm going to just cut it all off.  *wail* What will she play with instead?!

But that's another reason.  Because she sucks on it.  I try to wash my hair with only natural products, but with the amount of oil and skin build up (because I can't wash it every day), it's not getting clean.  I'm using regular old shampoo again, and it works, to a certain extent, but now the ends are dry and split and she's ingesting it.

So my scalp is pimpled, the hair is oily at the base and dry and split at the ends, it's constantly tangled - even when I've brushed it, it's falling out at a prodigious rate - leaving me with thinner hair in the front - which is highlighted by my attempts to keep the stuff out of my eyes, and my child is eating it.

And to top it all off...  I feel gross and hate my appearance in photos.

I don't want to be that mommy - the mommy who screams "no, don't take a picture of me!" and hides behind the baby, who won't leave the house because she's embarrassed to be seen, and who embarrasses her family by looking like a crazy homeless person.

Seize the scissors!  Take it off!  Take it all off!!

...before I change my mind...

Taking a moment to collect myself

Downstairs my child is in her crib screaming her head off.

I should go down and soothe her, but I need a moment.

I finally got so hungry that I had to eat, so I put her in the crib and microwaved the leftover potatoes.  I put butter on them, burning my finger in the process.  Then I ladelled some of the sour cream over the top.  Finally, as her cries reached fever pitch, I opened the cheddar cheese.  Gave it the sniff test.  It passed.  I glanced in, it looked fine.  I dumped it over the potatoes and BAM a big nasty moldy wad of cheese poured out and went SMACK into the potatoes.

Baby screaming, Mommy screaming.

I tried to get all the cheese off the potatoes.

But you know, I'd microwaved the fuckers so much that the cheese and it's mold melted all over the place.

I pondered eating it for about 30 seconds.  Then dumped it in the bin.

There went lunch.

I'm so hungry.  And I just wasted all the fast food I had.  And because I get loopy when I'm hungry and because my hormones are still all out of whack (when will they calm the fuck down?) this is just The Most Awful Horrible Bad Thing to Ever Happen In The Whole Wide World.

I'm gonna crawl into the crib with my daughter now and cry.

*** Edit: Having FINALLY eaten, I can say that I suffer more from low-blood sugar than post-partum.  In fact, the word "loopy" should be changed to "raging lunatic."  Ask the DB.  Ask my BFF.  Feed me on demand or face the WRATH. ***

I need more than 30 minutes a day

A while back I told my BFF that all I really wanted was 30 minutes to myself.  But I totally waste it sleeping or showering when I get it, so what that means is…

I totally need more than 30 minutes a day.  To myself.  Minus a baby.  And minus a husband.

Don’t get me wrong - I absolutely ADORE my child.  And I suppose, the Danish Boy… but…

OMG I want some time ALONE!

Let’s take dinner.

An average dinner is one of us eating while one entertains the baby (we’ve had a rare meal or two where she entertains herself, but alas, dinnertime is also Cranky Baby time) and while I take the baby upstairs to play or something so she doesn’t fuss, the DB stands by my chair while I eat, bouncing an increasingly unhappy baby.

Ever try to eat while your child makes unhappy grunts?

Damn near impossible.

I try to not be That Mom who tells the unfortunate father what to do… but COME ON, walk with the baby, talk to the baby, do something with the baby that IS NOT IN THE DINING ROOM!  Let me eat in peace!

Let’s take last night.

Last night I scarf as fast as I can while he sits with the grumpy baby, across from me, so she can stare at me with plaintive eyes.  “Mommy, this man will not entertain me!  I’m bored!  Hold me!  I miss you and your funny faces!!  Please?” And having Not Finished My Beer, I scooped her up and away.  An HOUR later, I head back to the dinning room, cause you know, my Not Finished Beer remains to be finished and I’m thinking, maybe I can bounce the baby while drinking it, I’m multitalented.  I rock.  I’m THE MOMMY!

He’s read the newspaper.

The newspaper.

Dammit man, I eat in 10 minutes flat so you can take an HOUR for a leisurely meal? 

ARGH!

*** To be fair, I could also write a post about how a few nights ago the DB washed all the dishes while I was trying to feed the baby to sleep and how on Saturday mornings he often takes her for long walks so I can sleep a bit longer.  I kept repeating this to myself last night so that I didn’t take a frying pan to his head.  He's still alive, so I guess it works. ***

I'm Home

What does that mean, "I'm Home"?  Where's home?  What makes a home, anyway?

My friends and family would have me call California home, although I haven't lived there for over 10 years. Certainly it was "home" for a long time after I left, especially when I lived in Rhode Island. With all apologies to friends and folks living in New England - but what a great place to visit!  But California is no longer my home.  It's where I'm from and it's where I wouldn't mind moving back to, but it's not home.

Since I've moved away from home, I've lived in a number of places under a number of conditions. A tent in the desert, the floor of a professor's house, student housing, shared apartment, shared room, small apartment, huge house, California, Rhode Island, Denmark. I'm not the only one who has moved around a lot and lived in many different situations - Danish Boy has lived in a caravan in Holland, a kibbutz in Israel, and more apartments than I could name.

Now that we've bought a house, I can say that I do finally have a place that everyday feels more and more like my *home*. But really, "home" is best described by this song that I discovered on The Girl Who.



Speaking of music - I get all teary-eyed and squeeze the Spawn even more when listening to Pink.  It has nothing to do with the above post.  I just figured that while I was putting up music, I might as well throw this one in to.  :-)

1001 Kisses

Something happens when you have a baby.  Your brain melts or something.  Things that used to be important are suddenly completely unimportant and you find that you can spend five hours doing nothing but kissing your child's toes.

Now that she's four months old - things have gotten even better.  She's started to "kiss" back.

I put "kiss" in quotation marks because it's somewhere between a kiss and a drool attack.

And it's probably one of the most wonderful things in the world.

She also smiles when she sees me.  Not a little grin, but a full eye-squinting-gum-showing-little-bit-of-tongue smile.  She laughs when I blow on her belly.  She giggles when I nibble on her fingers.  She gets surprised when she farts loudly.

I never thought farts were funny until now.  But her shocked face is TOO FUNNY.

There is a lot of truth in the "fourth trimester" - the first three months after birth are pretty dull.  Eat, sleep, poop.  And cry.  She was constantly gazing just over my shoulder at something that wasn't there.

At least I hope there wasn't something there.

One time I was looking in her eyes to see my reflection (the only way to see if she was looking right at me or, as usual, just past my ear) and I thought I saw something move behind me.  I must have jumped two feet in the air.  There was nothing behind me when I looked.  But... well... I turned the lights on in the rest of the house and was jumpy for the rest of the evening.

And while I adored my little Spawn, she wasn't really all that exciting.  It was hard to keep talking to her when there was absolutely no response.  You begin to feel pretty stupid talking to a baby that just keeps looking at you like you are an idiot.

Why won't this woman just SHUT UP!  What do you want from me?

But over the course of the last month she's turned from a newborn into a baby.  She looks at me.  She smiles and talks, laughs and "kisses."  She's become, dare I say it, FUN!

How could you not kiss this??  Her hands and feet are slightly blurry in this photo because she was waving them around and telling me about how she's wriggled her way from one end of the crib to the other using nothing but her head and heels.  

I mean, obviously the dishes aren't done and the clothes aren't folded and there is cat hair ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE, because I'm busy kissing this amazing baby!

It's Not My Fault!

He talks with his mouth full!

(Normally, this would be a big "ewwww MANNERS MAN!" moment - but since having a baby, we've had to combine as many things as possible to try to get it all done.  If I could figure out how to drink coffee and shower at the same time, I'd do it.)

DB: And the title was something like "sunshine and islands"...
AG: Sunshine and VIOLENCE?
DB: No - ISLANDS.
AG: I heard VIOLENCE.
DB: No, it was definitely ISLANDS.
AG: That's kinda too bad... I really like "and VIOLENCE!"
DB: Anyway...

You know what I love about our relationship?  That this conversation doesn't even make him blink.  He wanted to tell me about his day and NOTHING was going to get in his way... not even his wife's verbal tangents.

Almost there...

Last week I passed the theory portion of the driving test that I need to take to get me a Danish driver's license.

Ja, bitches!  Hvad skal du være særligt opmærksom på NU?

Translation: Yeah, ladies of questionable politeness, what should you be especially aware of now?

So, next it is driving around, taking direction in Danish, being særligt opmærksom på bicycles, pedestrians, and stray cows... hey, it's the boonies out here... and then I'll take THAT test...

And then...

Then I'll have a Danish driver's license and I'll FINALLY be able to get someone to help me with my NEMotherfuckID so I can FINALLY log into bank accounts and tax accounts.  (You can only get phone help for your NemID if you have a Danish passport or a Danish driver's license... otherwise you need to rely on the very friendly, but not particularly well-trained in NemID shenanigans, Municipal Secretaries of Magic.  I'm not changing my citizenship, so a-driving I will go.)

Not that I really need to be able to get the damn thing to work, since it turns out that my accountant can log into my tax accounts.

Yeah, *I* can't get my NemID to work, so *I* can't log into my account, but my accountant, who I've NEVER MET can get all the numbers he needs to find out that I didn't pay enough in taxes last year.

This is not particularly what I wanted him to find.  I wanted him to find butt-loads of money owed ME.  This is normally the way of things.  But that dear Danish Boy of mine went and earned Too Much Money.  I don't particularly feel like we're living in a higher tax bracket.

So while I may finally achieve my goal of getting a Danish driver's license - and doing the WHOLE THING IN DANISH to boot - it's not like I'm going to be getting a CAR to DRIVE at the end of it.

Thus the ongoing argument around the house - Audi, Volvo, Benz, or an Opel named Oliver... is moot.

However, I've discovered my Drag Queen name:  Farlig Vejsving

Pronounced "far-lee vwhy-swing" or as we say it in America - Dangerous Curves... baby.

Actually I love saying ubeting vigepligt "oo-bee-ting vee-a-plickt" which means "unconditional right of way" or "Yield Motherfucker!"  This nudges out "methamphetamines" as my new favorite thing to say, which is probably a good thing for my small child.  Because the health nurse would probably be rather alarmed to hear my child pipe up with "methamphetamines mommy!" during one of our visits.

Not that my child is saying much other than "pbthaaaaaaarghl" at the moment.  But really, it's a small step from there to "methamphetamines."

The word.  Not the drugs.  I'm pretty sure my child is many steps away from drugs.

I'm a shoe-in for Mother of The Year, I tell ya.

All About Alot

You may be wondering, "how did Alot deal with the move?" or "how is Alot dealing with the baby?"

'Cause, poor Alot, you know - he thought he was moving to this big house with a doting couple and then SHAZAM he's suddenly scooped up and deposited in the middle of wheat fields in a house half the size of the one he'd so carefully chosen and there is this new screaming entity that takes up the space on Mommy that was HIS!

I call this one "Whistler's Mother and Her Cat"

Sometimes he'd even stand on my belly.  However, it was too difficult to get photos while he'd do that, so you'll just have to imagine a large cat on my prodigious belly.

But now there's no belly, but there is a baby.  An increasingly large and demanding baby.  How would Alot deal with such a thing!?!  

Boy am I glad I wore a sweater or I might have gotten chilly... oh wait...

I'd say he loves it here.  He bounds about, bouncing off of our fruit trees, climbing up the side of the house and coming in the upstairs windows - even if the back door is wide open.  I guess it's more fun?

He also is pretty fond of the Spawn.  If she's crying, he comes running to me.  This happens whether she's in her crib or in my arms.  Alot hears her yell and runs to me and begins meowing.  You could say that he's just begging me to shut her up.  I prefer to think he's a watch cat for the baby.  

Then when I'm holding her or nursing her, he cuddles up next to me and purrs.  He puts up with her kicking him in the head.  He loves to watch us change her.  Preferably from the changing table itself, which means it can get a bit crowded up there.

The only time he's a little creeped-out by the baby is when she's on the floor, which is becoming more and more frequent.  He looks at her and looks at me and it's very much like he's saying "Mom, you dropped it!  You wanna pick it up or somethin'?" and then he retreats to a higher vantage point.

I'm fairly sure he'll get over it by the time she actually begins crawling.

I took this right after he dove into the wheat field across the road from my home.  

I swear there was a tail visible.  I just can't find it now.  

Mothergroupin'

I've got nothing against my Mothergroup - they are all lovely ladies and I'm going to keep on going and one of these days I'll actually host.  Probably even before the moving boxes are unpacked, because, let's be honest here - some of these boxes will get unpacked about the time Spawn goes off to college and I'll be all, "shit, you need a cardboard box... let me empty this one sitting in the kitchen and give it to you... oh, that's where that went!"

Random placement of furniture is also a problem.

I do like the Mothergroup because I leave the house for something other than trying to calm a screaming child and I hear realDanish, which keeps me a-practicin', and I get to compare my child to other children the same age.

Wait, whut?  You compare your child to other children?  Bad mommy, no biscuit!

Sometimes comparison is a good thing.  Lest we start thinking my child is the most gifted child on the planet ("Oh my god, she's found her toes!  GENIUS!  Call Nobel!!") or lagging ("When do babies crawl?  Should my child be crawling already?  Oh GOD, my child isn't CRAWLING!  I've FAILED as a parent!") or mutant ("She fit in this outfit yesterday, I swear.  How is it I can't get it over her head today??).  I'm proud to say my child is completely normal and average.  One hundred percent the most amazing creature on the planet, fer shizzle, and the cutest baby evah, but not weirdly "specialists need to be involved" different.

But let me be honest (okay, when am I not? We get some brutal honesty going on on this here blog.), there were times and still ARE times where I want to throw my coffee mug on the floor and announce that I am *not* going to be part of a Mothergroup and that's IT!  The reason why is completely irrational, but let me clue you in to what I've been hearing for the past three months:

So, do you have a Mother's Group?  Do they have a Mother's Group on your island?  Have you joined a Mother's Group?  My wife was ever so glad for her Mother's Group.  Have you joined a Mother's Group?? So, are you going to your Mother's Group?  I'm so glad to hear you have a Mother's Group.  Have you joined a Mother's Group??? How's your Mother's Group?  How nice it is that you are going to a Mother's Group! HAVE YOU JOINED A MOTHER'S GROUP?!?!

Maybe it's the rebel in me, but all this yay-mothergrouping was really turning me off to the concept.  I mean, it's all a little groupthink 1984ish feeling.  Joiny joiny.  Meld and assimilate.   It's not a Mother's Group - it's a Mothergroup.

I can't decide if this poster is for groupthink or against it.

And that results in me going, "I'll never join you!" and turning down what could be a valuable support system... not to mention meeting the mothers of my child's future classmates and friends.

If only you would choose to join the Mothersgroup - 

with our combines strength we could rule this galaxy as 'Mothers with Spawns'...

But I swallowed my initial gut doubt and figured I'd give it a try.  Maybe it wouldn't be so creepy as everyone was making it out to be (not that they were trying... but still... it was all so groupy).  And it turned out to be...

Five women and their babies who get together for coffee and chitchat.

Strangely enough, this photo seems a bit sinister to me.

And this is just LOL.

I suppose someday we may get ambitious and go and do something bigger than hanging out in each other's kitchens... but for now it's enough for me to get us dressed, out the door, and on the bus to a different part of the island.  So far the other mothers are non-judgmental and open - some are breastfeeders and some use formula, some are good at dressing their child in cute matching kit and some are just happy they got their child dressed, some are showered and tidy and some are barely awake - and no one makes an issue out of it.  It's nice to see mothers getting along and supporting each other.

As long as it doesn't go all Stepford Wives-ish... cause then I'm outta there.

Not a single one of these women has mom-hair... I just can't compete.

The Boob Strikes Back

So how's that breastfeeding going then?

Hey, I haven't talked about my boobs in, like, forever, man.  Obviously it's time for an update.

Seriously, though, HOW DID WE FREAKING SURVIVE AS A SPECIES???

Have you ever heard of a "nursing strike"?  It's where your child up and decides, You know what, ma? You can keep your stinkin' boobs to yourself, I ain't eatin' no how!

And then screams and screams and screams every time you offer the breast, sucks on every other object in a 5 mile radius, crying and begging for food - but will not suck on the one thing that will solve the dilemma.  Meanwhile, engorgement happens and you end up with two huge, painful, hot (as in the temperature, although I imagine it looks pretty awesome to the loutish members of the opposite sex, damn their un-mammory-glandness), and worst of all, LEAKING, rocks on your chest.

Here's something I didn't know - milk will actually shoot out in random directions.  You look into your nursing bra to check if you need to change the pad again and get shot in the face.  Hello friendly fire!
 
Look, boob, I'm trying to keep you from getting a plugged milk duct or mastitis - which until now was something I'd only read about in All Creatures Great and Small, thanks a lot James Herriot for that, by the way - and there is no need to shoot me in the EYE!

This is how you prevent mastitis in a cow.  Now you know.

I think the worst thing about a nursing strike is how unhappy bunny she is about it.  Tears of rage and all that screaming and stiff body... what I call the "crucified baby" pose... it's just awful.

I went to the web to see if there was any advice - thank god for the web, by the way, it let me know that it wasn't me or my child, sometimes babies just get into a fuss like this and it's no one's fault and it's not going to kill anyone (it just feels that way) - and the advice was "try again when she's calm."

Wait... CALM?!?  This child will never be calm again!  This child is going to starve to death before she's calm!  Number one way to calm a baby is to feed her and I can't even bloody do that!  What do I DO? *panic panic panic* (Normally I'm all Cool Hand Luke about motherhood, but a nursing strike breaks my heart.)

What we have here is a failure to communicate.*

Advice: try to calm your baby by giving her a relaxing bath.

Ha.  Ha ha ha.  Ha ha ha *sob* ha ha ha.  The only thing my child hates more on this planet than... wait, there is NOTHING on god's green earth she hates more than a bath.

Advice: try to calm your baby by going for a drive.

Oh, wait, yes, there is the strapping her into the car seat.  She might hate that more than a bath.

Result:

Archaeogoddess's Advice for the Terminally Fussy Baby: Sometimes a baby is just going to "fuss" (read: scream bloody murder).  But sooner or later she'll pass out from exhaustion.

I *hate* the "cry it out" technique.  But it's all I can do.  I hold her close and soothe her best I can and as soon as she begins to drop off to sleep, I get her in position and do a sneak boob attack.  A flanking maneuver, if you will.

It works.  She eats.  She eats like she's never had a problem at all.  In fact, she'll look up at me and give me this look like "jesus, it took you long enough!" as if I hadn't been trying to feed her every 15 minutes for the last TWO HOURS.

*Y'all have NO IDEA how long it took to get that baby into that photo without access to photoshop... just sayin'.

The most unexpected change

I expected my body to be different after having a baby.  I mean, I've studied enough human anatomy (usually of the long-dead kind) to know that having a baby leaves traces in YOUR VERY BONES! [insert dramatic organ music here]

("organ music" *snort* I'm punny!)

But I didn't expect my taste buds to change.

That's just messed up.

We have a great organic micro-brewery on the island.  And I've been looking forward to having me a big ol' glass of Rise (pronounced Reez-ah) beer (pronounced beer) since last summer.

Only now it tastes like soap.  SOAP!!

It's not the glass.  After my aborted beer attempt at home, I tried some of my husband's beer at Kongesgade 34, the restaurant we frequented on Wednesday nights (until this week it had a two-for-one hamburger special on Wednesday nights so we could afford it - but give it a go if you're on the island, local organic food served there, good stuff) and the soap taste was still there.

WTF???

Even regular beer now has a slightly soapy taste.  But the cheaper the beer, the less the soapy taste.  I'm now doomed to cheap crap beer!!  The Danish Boy is so disappointed in me.  But it means he gets all the Rise beer to himself and can just buy me a case of whatever is cheapest.  Damn him.

But one doesn't lose the joy of beer without getting something in return.  Had you asked me a year ago how I felt about pineapple I would have said, "ugh, only in a piña colada and only if you are heavy handed with the rum... and the coconut milk... and did I mention rum?"

But guess what?

I've been eating pineapple.

I *know*!  WTH!  And my favorite ice creams are all nut based, like walnut or pistachio and my favorite ice cream bar is a juice bar with cream interior - chocolate doesn't even really land in the top 10!  I had Chips Ahoy cookies the other day... and I liked them.  Normally I would turn up my nose because of the serious lack of chocolate or even chocolate flavor, but now the lack of chocolate is in it's favor.

It's like the world is ending or something!  Has hell frozen over??

I'm terrified to discover what I dislike or like next.  What if I lose my deep abiding love of avocados??  Or start liking shrimp??

What if I discover I like... BANANAS???

To be fair, it wasn't like I was actually paying attention...

A few days ago...

DB: We need more of that tea.

AG: What tea?

DB: The one with the tiger on it.

AG: With the what?

DB: Tiger.

AG: You mean "Bengal Spice" - the box with a tiger on it.

DB: Yeah, that.  And that's what I said, "tiger."

AG: Oh, I heard "Thai girl."

DB: No, I definitely did NOT say "Thai girl."  I said "tiger."

AG: Yeah, well...

Now, I was slightly distracted during the conversation, but he does have an accent and swallows his R's. Tiger and Thai girl sound completely different when *I* say them... but him... not so much.

There's probably a Thai girl behind that tiger 

or possibly *in* the tiger, who looks a bit shifty to me.

(I have not received any money from Celestial Seasonings for this... but they are totally free to send me buttloads of their Chai Tea which I heart more than Bengal Spice. *hint hint* *wink wink*)

You don't have to be an asshole just because the other guy is a butthead

So I don't get to write all that much these days.  Half the time I'm typing one-handed anyway.  But I do get to read... often while standing and swaying, holding a Very Angry Baby.

And what I'm getting out of what I've been reading is pretty much "A does B to C" and if you think B might be a bad idea, you can read about how it's all okay because C is our enemy, or at least not A, who is either us or a friend, or a guy/country/religion in a cute bunny suit.  In fact, comments sections are full of people saying it's all okay to do B to C, because C does B to X,Y, and Z all the freaking time.

Now my mom once asked me if all my friends jumped off a bridge, would I jump too?

You could point out that C is not our friend, so this gem of a saying has no point, except...

If we wouldn't to do something we know to be wrong, even though all of our friends are doing it, why on Earth would we do something we know to be wrong because it's what our enemies do?

It's a really small island

So a week before we moved to our new home in a small village, away from the small town that we lived in, we got a letter.

It was addressed to our new address.  The one we hadn't moved to yet.

But it was delivered to our old address... where we were currently living.  Without any corrections being added to the envelope.

Not only did the letter sender already know where we were moving to, but the postman also knew we hadn't moved yet and so delivered it to where we actually lived.

It's a small island.

More on driving Danishly

In Denmark I have my very own parking place.

Kidding.

"Gods" is Danish for "goods" as in merchandise and other things that are transported in trucks.  And it's pronounced "Gus."  Stupid silent D.

So anyway, on-line practice theory test - shows me a picture of a guy loading something on the top of his car and the question is about how far off the car can something stick before you need to tie a flag to it.

What I hear:

How far can Gus hang off the back of your car without a flag?

Insert moment of confusion.

Then: ding ding ding!  I remember that picture.  GODS! The test man is saying GODS! Thank God!

Only now I'm hysterically laughing.  Spawn, who was nursing, is being bounced all over the place (she's a trooper, she never let go of my boob.  OW.) and I'm missing what the test man is saying.

Doesn't matter, I've got to be særlig opmærksom (especially aware) of Gus hanging off of cars.  LOL!!

So I didn't pass...

Oh well.

I missed 9 out of 25 when you are only allowed to miss 5.  But I think I know which ones I got wrong.  A few I didn't understand at all.  No, really, the vocabulary was something I'd never heard before.  I had no idea what the man was saying.  So obviously I wasn't likely to get those.  But I'm slightly frustrated because some of the questions were unduly complicated, unlike the practice tests where the situations depicted were much more straight forward.  I've got to get back the mindset of the Danish equivalent of the US Department of Motor Vehicles where you don't think like a driver, but like an anally-retentive OCD-suffering five year old.

"I would have put on underwear under my pants, but you didn't tell me to put them on TODAY.  Then you didn't tell me not to pee BEFORE I put on my pants.  Therefore, it is not my fault that I peed in the car on the way to school and then mooned the principle.  Really, mother, it is ALL YOUR FAULT."

It's nice to know that driver's tests are universally more complicated then they need to be and do not mean that the people who pass are good drivers, just good at thinking like that nutty 5-year old.

There was an interesting mix of people taking the exam.  Most of us were fairly young.  ("Most of us?" Jesus woman, you are 32, not old, but a good deal older than the five 18 year olds that were there.)  There was an older guy there.  And by "older" I mean in his 50s.  I don't know if he'd lost his license or had just decided you were never to old to learn to drive, but it was nice to not be the oldest person there.  I also didn't do the worst.  That was left to a woman who missed 20.  Twenty!

There were several of us who spoke Danish as a second language, but I think I was the only one who had only recently learned Danish.

I'll find out tonight what I need to do now - how much will it cost to take the test again and when I can take it again and what I should do to study more.  I can pay to take all the tests on the website, but not a single picture or question there appeared in my test, which seemed to date from the 70's.  They were slides for crying out loud!  I really wish I could have seen the one's I missed and gotten the correct answers.  It would have made it far more easy to study.  As it is, I have to guess.

And until I pass, I'm forbidden from driving AT ALL in Denmark.  They took my American license away.

The joke's on them, though.  It expires relatively soon, so I'll be getting another one.  Bwahahahah!

Positive results either way

I'm taking the theory part of my Danish drivers license tomorrow.

In Danish.

Whether or not I pass, I still win.

Pass: oh hells, yes, I rock!

Fail: well, it's not like I actually speak Danish, so how can they expect me to pass the first time around!  I win for every question I get right!

Meanwhile, we pick up the keys to our house today!  I have a house!!  I've only been able to pack up my books and other office stuff because:
A) I gotta baby, ya'll.  She demands food and fresh diapers and when we're going "hands free" (i.e. in the baby carrier) she really hates it when I bend over (baby suddenly goes upside down and tries to slide out of the carrier... really not a pleasant moment for any of us) or squat (little legs get smooshed).  I gotta pack when she naps.
B) I done run out of boxes.  You can look at this two ways - I need less books or I need more boxes.

Trick question.  Obviously I need more boxes.

I also need more bookshelves.  I found more books behind other books when I emptied the bookshelf.  Some I had put there to save space and some I had knocked down accidently when stuffing more books into, what turns out to be, too little space.

I've recently been promised more books if I get my ass out to the Copenhagen area.

Seriously, you can never have too many books.  Only not enough room for said books.

It's May 1st or "May Day" - which in certain parts of the world is International Workers Day.  There's a tent in the park across the street and a beer stand and red flags.  I can see drunk communists from my backyard!  And they wonder why I won't put my child out in the baby carriage unattended.  Don't they know my child could catch communism???

Also hard to believe: some people will not recognize the sarcasm in the above paragraph.

As Americans are losing the right to collective bargaining - in Wisconsin they've already lost the right - perhaps we should take a moment to reflect on workers rights and raise a beer in their honor.

Or erect a large phallic symbol and get young girls to dance around it.

My new house has a flag pole - all I need are some brightly colored ribbons and a man with a goat.  ('Cause all pagan rituals involve a man with a goat, dontcha know.)

I would have arranged for this to happen, but I'm busy studying for my theory test.

I'm no Anne Geddess

"Send me pictures" a number of people cried.

And then *I* cried.

'Cause seriously, it was hard enough to get a picture of my pregnant belly (the DB *did* finally take some photos, which are of course now lost somewhere on his computer leaving me with only my lame attempts) and now I'm supposed to photograph this tiny wriggling baby?  One handed, or course, because she will just Not Stay Still.  Honestly, I ask her to smile and hold that pose and she sticks her hand in her mouth or bursts into tears or makes a monkey face.  WORK WITH ME CHILD!!

This is not my child, but they share the same hairdresser.

And then suddenly she'll smile.

But the minute I hold the shiny silver box up to my face, she loses the cute "oh, I'm going to lay here and smile and coo at you" face.  It's remarkable.  I have an adorable child, but you'd never know it from the photographs.  And when I finally get a good shot and I crow with joy, I then discover that the flash didn't go or the auto focus chose the floor or my foot to focus on.  Turns out I am a lousy photographer.

The Last Belly Shot - taken a few days before popping

I gotta work on my aim...

It's out of focus, but seriously, it's the best picture I have taken so far!!

I can take great pictures of inanimate objects.  I'm even pretty good at cats.  Sleeping cats, at least.

But I am lousy, awful, terrible, and just plain bad at photographing people.