Sunshine at Last

We left off in the middle of May; so that’s where we resume.

Not only has it been a pretty thin month photographically; there’s only one picture of each girl in this post. That’s because although it’s been a very busy month, we’ve each been busy in our own individual ways, none of which have been particularly photogenic.

For example, I got my first vax shot (Pfizer) on the 24th of May. It was like waiting for a ride at a theme park: a long twisting line under a tent outside, then a long winding line inside, at the end of which one was directed to one of several smaller lines outside a number of offices.

I include a couple of pictures for the historical record: hopefully this whole episode will become a never-repeated historical curiosity, and these pictures will eventually seem strange and surreal in retrospect to the primary subjects of this blog.

Molli has also received her first shot, even though she already had the virus, so Maddie’s the only one in the family at this point without a vax. We’re not very concerned about it.

We had our first day of cow-tending toward the very end of May.

I had a bunch of pretty pictures of the woods to include here, but I just glanced back at the last post and can see that the emergence of spring was already adequately documented.

So we’ll skip those pics and jump right to a visit from a very little guest.

That’s Mathilde, the daughter of Trine’s colleague Maria and her husband Chris: they’re the couple who used to house- and dog-sit for us on our vacations. In this picture Mathilde looks like both of our girls looked at her age, so it’s like seeing an infant Maddie or Molli with Didi (something which, given their respected ages, we obviously never did get to see).

We attended Sophie’s virtual graduation, but weirdly the only picture I have from the day is of one of the speakers. I’m still sort of astonished that she’s graduated college: I’m pretty sure it was just a couple of years ago we met her in the hospital on the day of her birth. (I’m sure it’s even more astonishing to Aunt Deb and Uncle Gene!)

I was still working from home. My lunches were less than spectacular for the eight months of my basement employment, so I thought I’d record one for the permanent record: toward the end, this was my go-to lunch: herring on Danish rye and an avocado and tomato mad on whatever other kind of bread was about to go stale.

Mormor sent us this picture of Maddie at a lunch they had during a day together in town.

And yes, really, that’s the only picture of Maddie in this post.

I’m so sorry!

But you know what I do have a picture of? Rain accumulating in the stairwell outside the garage.

(Heavy rainstorms are now a major source of anxiety: if there’s too much water too fast, I have to bail out that stairwell to prevent the garage from flooding.)

Also for the historical record: the saga of Maddie’s missing R. It’s an ongoing saga with a very long history that’s not very interesting, but it’s been a big part of our lives for over a year now.

The white rhododendron in bloom, the apple tree finally leafed, and the lawn freshly mowed for the first time of the season (I think).

The house down on Søndergårdsvej taking much more definitive shape:

I remembered having posted a shot of this bench in the desolation of winter. I thought I’d include a shot of the bench in the splendor of spring.

Winter first (technically spring, so part of our “Indian Winter,” I guess):

Now real spring (actually Danish “traditional” summer):

I have no photos of the event itself, but we did manage to have an adult-only afternoon and evening with our old Easter lunch crowd. It was the first social event we’d attended with multiple guests from multiple households in about nine months. It was a great joy just to be sitting around with other adults drinking beer and eating grilled good.

On the 31st of May I had my first full day at the office since one Tuesday in November(which had itself been my first full day since September).

The office was… not crowded.

And my return was not as smooth as I might have liked.

But our team had been moved to a new location in the building, and the view from my desk doesn’t suck.

The romps with Didi have been more pleasant.

One Wednesday evening in early June, both girls were out having dinner away from the house. The restrictions on restaurants had just eased, and my “coronapas” had just recently become effective, so Trine and I snuck off for our first indoor restaurant dinner together in… a very, very long time.

Here’s Trine taunting Molli on the phone with news of what we were doing.

Not many pictures of the girls this month, but you get a whole sequence of duck shots.

The thing is, right around the halfway point of my commute, there’s a stretch of about half a kilometer that runs straight through a marsh. One side is pure marsh; the other is sort of marshy, but also a big soccer pitch.

All of a sudden in early June, I began encountering duck crossings here.

There are dozens of them, maybe more than 100, and they very slowly and stupidly from one side to the other. Traffic comes to a stop, and pedestrians and cyclists (like me!) have to proceed very cautiously through their ranks.

I encounter them on my morning and afternoon commutes.

In the middle of June we had a few very warm days. I also take a picture of the car’s temperature reading on the first hot day of the year (because I’m an idiot, that’s why).

About a week after that picture was taken, however, we had a few days of temperatures in the low thirties.

Summery weather produces summery pictures.

Think of it: we couldn’t have a single meal outside this year until June.

But man, the yard was blossoming wildly and all at once.

We had our friends Søren and Bodil and their family over for one of our bi-monthly lunches one Saturday in the middle of June, and since it was our day to tend the cows we brought them along.

Do they look delicious, or what?

For what it’s worth, we’ve done a pretty good job on last summer’s cow (“#33”). We’ve only got about 7-8 kilos of ground beef left, and very few nice cuts. Trine’s been reducing most of the last of the fat for use in various lotions.

That Saturday was also The Day Erikesen Dropped Dead in Parken. It was an awful moment for Denmark in the middle of all the happiness from the improving weather and rolled back restrictions and having European Cup games played right here in Copenhagen.

But Eriksen’s alive, and so (as of this writing) are Denmark’s hopes for a shot at the European championship.

Now for the permanent record, and your own tedium, before and after shots of the hedge haircut.

It’s a fun time of day to bike into work at 6 o’clock when the weather is nice and the day is bright: I see a lot of little details that I don’t get to see in the dark of winter, like this little fox on the corner of Enebærevej and Elmevej, not far from our house.

It was time to renew Molli’s American passport (to avoid a repeat of what we went through with Maddie on our February 2020 trip to Florida). Her new passport will be good for ten years: next renewal, she’ll be 26 years old.

Staggering.

But man, she takes a nice passport photo!

The little creatures of our neighborhood don’t just show themselves in the wee small hours of the morning: one afternoon as I was driving along Søndergårdsvej with Didi on our way home from the woods, a little white-tailed deer leaped out of a yard on our left, sprang across the street right in front of us (so close that it was very nearly transformed into venison on the spot), then ensconced itself into the growth on the side of the road and stared at us (Didi and me) as if angry at our having almost hit it:

And that’s pretty much it—except for this month’s edition of “favorite things I saw online this month,” which was this:

I promise there’ll be more pictures of this blog’s proper subjects in the next post, but I can’t guarantee it’ll be published before our vacation ends in the last week of July: we’re eight days from vacation, and I’m determined to let myself really relax. (We still have no official plans, but we may be headed to Portugal.)

Molli has finished her first year of gymnasium and quit her job at LIDL, has taken a new job with a bakery, has started driver’s ed, and is out with Kalle or her friends pretty much every night.

Maddie finishes 6th grade tomorrow, June 25, and has a very good last week of school so far. She’s also getting right back into the swing of handball, thanks to all the great physical therapy she’s been getting for her Osgood Schlatter’s. She’s also still growing.

I just this evening got my second Pfizer shot, which was good, but also got a flat on my bike on the way into work, which was not good.

But just eight more days to vacation….!