Back to June

Well, the strike has ended (although it turns out I will have to work from home with Molli Malou on Monday), and it appears as though we’ve finally sold the apartment. And Trine passed this week’s exam. It’s been a week of good news, as most of you know. So things are moving favorably.

The next two weeks are going to be pretty busy. As if we didn’t already have enough on our plates, the sale of the apartment means we’ll have to packing stuff up in every spare moment. On top of that, there are a number of work and personal social events queued up for the weekend before we leave. So there’l probably just be one more post before take off.

So let’s get caught back up on June.

I’m gonna dip into my own personal life for a moment to combat a popular stereotype.

At our “Friday bar” ast Friday, at work, it was decided that instead of just tapping the keg and setting out a bowl of flæskesvær, as we usually do, we would go out to Kongens Have, the royal garden outside Rosenborg castle, to drink some beer and eat sandwiches and throw some balls around.

I have always loved my job and thought I worked with a great group of people, but they set a new standard last week.

Now, they claim that they bought the case of Bud as a nod to me. (I should also note the only ball that was brought was a football–American, not European.) And I suppose that little fig leaf of altruism was necessary to conceal their shame at having purchased such a flagrantly commercial, American, elite-reviled product. But the facts don’t lie:

That’s right: out of two cases of Carl’s Special Lager, two cans have been drunk. No, sorry, just one. And out of the case of Carlsberg, only three cans have been drained. The case of Bud? Gone. I only got two myself.

Edge, Bud.

The garden at the house is blooming. So is Molli Malou.

The next picture is just a reminder of why those dead brown vines on the wall that hang so glumly all winter need to stay there…

And this next one is yet another foreign species that’s invaded Denmark recently: I forget it’s name, but it’s a horrible, all-conquering weed.

This is one of the downsides of globalization: insuperable foreign weeds!

I think I mentioned we’d been to the Harbor Party at the local (Furesø) beach–the local beach on the big lake, not our little one. We bought Molli Malou a brand new bathing suit for the occasion.

There was a carnival at the beach party, and one of the entertainments was a big bouncy slide. Molli Malou coudn’t wait to try it!

Up she went!

Which reminds me, I need to put together a little video from that day so you can see poor Molli Malou stranded atop the big inflatable side and suddenly realizing she is not, ever, in any way, going to go down that slide.

Fortunately a big bouncy horizontal play area was part of the same entertainment.

And of course, when there’s facepaint within a 50-meter radius, Molli Malou sniffs it right out.

Airplane ride. Cute kid. That’s all.

Furesøen is nice, but the Søndersø (“Southern Lake”) swimming hole suits us just fine.

One morning Trine took Molli Malou to the zoo and Molli Malou got some weird hair braid feather extension thing. She loved it wildly but was grudging about letting herself be photographed. This was the best of the bunch: in most of the pix I got, she’s screaming “Don’t take a picture!”

Ah, the bike pictures. Previous videos make commentary superfluous.

Some of you may have been wondering: why is Molli Malou’s mouth all brown in the video closeup? How does one get a brown mouth and chin from riding one’s bike? Answer: when another kid is having a birthday party in the yard on the day you learn to ride without training wheels.

And that’s it!

If I were truy ambitious I’d include pictures from tonight, when Molli Malou suddenly insisted on sleeping with Great Grandma’s “Handprint” quilt. But those can wait for the next post…