Here we are, just days away from December—a month so busy that it’s imperative I get this blog out tonight or tomorrow night because I won’t have time for it again until after Christmas. At which point I’ll have plenty of time, but probably also a lot of pictures of the stuff that made December so busy (and hopefully fun), meaning I’ll want to use that time to get those pictures posted.
And I’ll also want time to scan the thousands of photos and documents I brought back home from America last weekend—ohmygod, did you forget I was in America last week?
Indeed I was, and that trip is responsible for the preponderance of the photos below. As you shall see.
(Shut up, Greg. Show, don’t tell.)
We’ll start with some boring pictures of our roof.
Handsome young feller, ain’t he?
Well, believe it or not, he still wets himself. I actually took that picture because I needed a shot of our chimney, but it’s interesting in retrospect because this truly gorgeous new roof began allowing rain into our living room (from a spot about one yard to the right of the chimney in that picture, if it were passing straight through) during one of our many November storms—some of which were crazy windy, others of which were crazy rainy.
We’ve been in contact with the roofers and they will damn sure put an end to our living room rain.
But hey, while I was up there, I took a couple of other shots. Here’s one looking down the length of the house:
And here’s a closeup of one of the “updated” skylights the skylight people came by and installed.
Apparently the electrical connections to the hatches (they’re remote controlled and automated) were a huge shock hazard, but instead of recalling them all the company went around detatching them from electrical mains and equipping them with solar panels that generate adequate power to operate them.
Another thing I noticed up there: our gutters were choking.
(I cleaned them, but there were still leaves on the trees so I need to get up there again as soon as the weather and calendar give me a chance.)
And now for something completely… adorable.
For the permanent record, a shot of our living room fireplace as it is right now, which is just as it has been for our entire fifteen years in this house.
Come February 8, we’re going to have a much nicer arrangement. (That’s why I needed a shot of our chimney.)
And oh, another thing: we got a whole new roof and it still rains in our living room, and we had our whole water drainage system cleaned and refreshed and are suddenly getting lakes where we never had them before.
I mentioned that there were rainy storms and windy storms. Walks through Hareskov with Didi revealed the strength of the windy ones:
I promised Halloween pictures last month.
I actually meant picture. Our Halloween picture.
It doesn’t play well on such a small shot, and in semi-daylight, but it was actually pretty spooky. The neighborhood kids liked it, anyway.
I hope you enjoyed our Halloween Picture.
Next up is a picture that blows my mind.
Yes, just about a year or two ago (it seems), one of those little tykes from that vuggestue class picture would have been Maddie or Molli. Now Molli is one of the grown-ups.
Whoosh!
And now for something completely… earnest.
We held an unusually early Thanksgiving in Denmark this year. November 11th.
It was our turn to host.
The menu: sous-vide turkey (wings and legs air fried at the end, breast rolls pan seared), potatoes, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, candied yams, and brussels sprouts.
I really, really, really have to get better about taking nice pictures of our Thanksgivings. (You’ll see, alas, that I didn’t do much better in America.)
Maddie gave up her paper route—see the glee with which she flips the paper trailer a final bird.
I’m Maddie Marie Kammer Nagan’s father and I approved that message. We are all grateful for an end to the middle of the night deliveries to our carport that get Didi barking to wake the dead.
Still, it’s a good thing that picture didn’t make it to her employer because they actually sent her a very nice letter of recommendation.
No need to translate the whole thing: it just says Maddie did a highly satisfactory job and they can warmly recommend her. Just nice to have her first recommendation letter in the permanent record.
(If Molli ever got one from Lidl—and she certainly deserved one!—I never saw it.)
And suddenly it’s November 17 and I’m on my way to America!
On our descent I got an awesome view of Salem, Marblehead, and the neck.
And Nahant:
And just two hours after taking off, we land in Boston! I traveled in time you guys!
It was oddly warming just to see the old familiar names on the highway signs.
Proof of life picture sent back to Denmark:
It was late in Denmark, but I got an immediate visual reply.
I don’t think it affected when I took pictures, but for the first time in about 10 years my (employer paid) phone plan didn’t cover service in America, so I had no mobile roaming. That was wildly inconvenient and annoying—but it was also kind of cool having to find my way around with maps, or by memory, or by memories of maps.
Woke up early my first morning there. Everyone was asleep, so I figured I’d give old George Bailey a walk, but I didn’t know how to get him off the property safely (they have an “electric fence” and although the shock collar was off, he absolutely refused to leave the property with me), so I just went on a walk by myself.
Even crappy weather can be photogenic.
Saturday Aunt Deb and I went to their storage unit, hauled out all the Nana and Pop Pop stuff she’d been holding for the past two years, and spent most of the day going through it all. That was really the main point of the visit: wrapping up the last loose ends.
In sorting through everything I came across one photo I recorded onto my phone because I knew I’d be seeing Mike the next day.
That’s Mike (and Bill Hall) helping Pop Pop reinforce the seawall at Tidecrest, circa 1985-86.
The sign they’re holding up says “crushed stones.” It was originally jammed atop a garage-sized pile of crushed stones the supplier had dumped in the yard, thereby serving as the very first example of what Mike and I came to refer as “No Shit” signs.
We’d had our nose down in our work all day: I hadn’t even noticed how nicely the living room wall had been redone until Aunt Deb asked me what I thought of it.
So much nicer with the windows! Much more modern overall—fresh!
At the end of the day, my stack of stuff to take home looked like this:
But you should have seen how much stuff went into the trash!
There was still a little light, so Aunt Deb and I took George out for a romp at the Carlisle Cranberry bogs (which are no longer active).
Our drive was interrupted by some very ballsy turkeys.
I say ballsy because it’s five days before Thanksgiving and these turkeys were just strutting around like they owned the joint. (I realize there’s just one in that pic, but that’s only because it’s the best of all the pictures I took; there were actually at least five or six of them, all crossing in single file.)
The bog put on a very photogenic show for me.
I love the Aqua-Velva style signage (look it up, girls:it was already dated when I was a teenager) about dog poop:
Hard to read, I know, but they go like this:
Got dog?
Like bog?
Dog poop?
Please scoop!
George is a wonderful dog and doesn’t want for attention.
We went out for Mexican on Saturday night. It was real American Mexican food. I got the first chimichangas I’ve had in at least a decade. They weren’t very photogenic, but someone’s tacos were.
Sunday was set aside as a kind of memorial day for Nana and Pop Pop: we would scatter their ashes in the sea off of Marblehead.
Weirdest picture ever of Nana and Pop Pop:
(And Winnie—that’s her in the blue pouch.)
And we still have a little Great Grandma and Grandpa hanging around!
Sunday, November 19, 2023, around 13:15 EST: Nana and Pop Pop are scattered to the waves.
(Absolutely textbook photobombing by Merry Kimber White.)
After a reading of Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar, it was time to scatter.
Apart from them, but nearby, their beloved Winnie:
We all did an Atomic Red Hot Fireball shot to comemmorate the occassion.
If you’re wondering what happened to Si & Lil: we forgot their bag.
(Well, Aunt Deb forgot their bag, but I didn’t even think to ask if she’d remembered it.)
Apart from the usual cast of characters, we were joined for the solemn ceremony by Mike MacIver and Merry Kimber White. They’re not in so many pictures, but they’re one of the reasons we have so many of the five of us.
I kept four stones from the site as tokens of remembrance. They’re on my bookshelf. I don’t know what to do with them.
My oldest friend in the world pulls a Molli: I hand him my camera to take just a couple of pictures, and he sneaks in a selfie.
Didn’t realized he’d done it until I unloaded the camera when I got home.
I don’t see myself at all in that picture. Is it me? It doesn’t look like me. It looks like one of the Schmidts.
After the ceremony we went for lunch at the Three Cod Tavern.
You know: on Village Street.
Next to the Village Plaza.
I had to have a lobster roll and I was not disappointed.
I finally got to see Mike’s house, in Lynn, in a nice quiet neighborhood that’s within a few hundred yards of the Swampscott and Salem borders.
It’s a great patio they have set into the woodsy hill on which they live, and you can just sort of make out the fire pit. The plan was that we’d spend Monday evening sitting around the fire pit and drinking and chatting the night away, but the weather was unkind. Anyway, it was still Sunday in that picture.
Sunday evening Mike and I drove up to catch a set of Adam’s (with the Bordellos) up at the Rhumb Line in Gloucester.
I spent the night at Mike and Leslie’s—we had pizza, drinks, and talk, but were all asleep by around midnight. (I crashed on their couch.) They were busy the next morning, so I thought I’d go around Marblehead and get some good pictures with the Olympus.
I wrote about it elsewhere (no links here, remember), but I had a sort of epiphany while in Crocker Park. Here’s what I wrote elsewhere:
I realized any pictures I took that day would be stupid and superfluous.
I realized that because I’d spent much of the previous Saturday sorting through all my parents’ old pictures with my sister and casting away all the pictures that featured only scenery I wasn’t familiar with. Why burden my own kids with a lot of scenery that would be meaningless to them?
And didn’t that logic apply to more than the landing and the park?
I was alone in my old hometown, disguised as an adult, and although I was surrounded by ghosts on every side—memories of every kind and color, recollections of all the many little (and enormous!) triumphs and disasters that made me who I am—the town itself in its current form meant nothing to me. It wasn’t my town any more. I could take all the pictures I wanted, but why bother? If I was dying for scenery from my old hometown I could always find them on the internet, and they’d probably be better than any pictures I’d take on my own.
I … drove straight out of town and did some shopping at a mall in the next town over.
Not entirely true: I did take one last picture before leaving Marblehead in my rear view mirror:
Having spent the first night at Mike’s, I spent the second at the Waterfront Hotel down by where Pickering Wharf used to be. Or still is. (I can’t keep up and don’t care.)
It was a very nice room!
Adam, Mike, and Leslie met me at the hotel bar, we had a couple drinks, we wandered to a nearby restaurant for dinner, wandered to a nearby bar for more drinks, and that was that.
The next morning I met Mike and Leslie for brunch at The Ugly Mug on Washington Street.
Still a few days to Thanksgiving, but they were already putting the Salem tree up:
I couldn’t make up my mind: I wanted everything on the menu. We’re very brunch deprived in Denmark: even places that serve brunch rarely offer eggs benedict, and nobody in Denmark serves biscuits and gravy. I indulged myself.
After brunch we walked around Salem, shopping and talking and posing for photographs with statues of ancient sit-com stars. (Samantha from Bewitched.)
And mid-afternoon I drove back up to Chelmsford.
This note was lying on the kitchen counter: apparently Sophie had been doodling and Hannah had corrected her cursive doodle. I thought it was hilarious and adorable.
Another quick exchange with Denmark:
That night Hannah’s current boyfriend came for dinner. I’m sorry to say I don’t remember his name. (Really: I am genuinely sorry!)
And preparations for the American Thanksgiving were underway.
Another bog tour with George (see him bounding just above and right of center):
Remembering to selfie to prove I was there!
I think I was out on the back stoop just talking on the phone with Trine, and George wandered out to sit beside me. Deb took the picture.
Man, you can just smell this photo:
Before the guests arrived I took the girls out on an elephant hunt—a Thanksgiving tradition born in Deep River and dormant lo these 21 years.
You can barely see it in the next photo, but Sophie tracked the first pachyderm: the elephant was hiding in a tree!
Hannah tracked another to the far corner of the yard. Her FBI training paid off: she took it out with a single head shot.
Trophy photo!
Double!
The only picture I have of Thanksgiving itself is this nice shot of the table. Sorry.
The next day was not just my return date: it was Black Friday in America! So of course we had to go to a mall.
…and we no sooner got back from the mall then I had to readjust my luggage to accommodate those last-minute purchases and hop in the car with Aunt Deb for the airport.
Buh-bye, Boston!
The return trip was a joy. There was no line for check-in, no line for security, and I had an exit row seat—the only one in coach who had one!
It was a comfortable trip. It only took 6½ hours and I actually slept for one of them, maybe 1½. Best trans-Atlantic crossing of my life (and probably why I really had no jet lag at all).
I don’t know where that picture of Maddie and her friend Lucas came from. I didn’t take it, I can’t find it in any texts Maddie, Molli, or Trine sent me, but there it was on my phone. Future Maddie (or present Maddie, if you ever swing through here), any idea how I got that, and why?
And speaking of Maddie: here’s her 9th grade school picture without watermarks.
I love that smile!
And finally, favorite stupid (but personally relevant) internet meme of the month:
That’s it… and like I said up front, I have to wrap this up quickly in order to focus on the important business of the weekend ahead, so it’s just gonna get a quickie review before I hit publish and go bounding into December… so for whatever errors, omissions, or stupidities you had to endure on your way to this sentence, I apologize.
See you in about a month!
