December (Quickly)

Everyone is on the brink of sleep here, and even Molli Malou managed to go down without a fight at 9pm (we didn’t get home from our dinner with Oldemor until 8pm, hence the later-than-normal bedtime). I’m not quite tired enough to go to sleep yet, myself, but I’m way too tired to do much of anything beyond the bare minimum required of me. So I’m going to get caught up with December on the Molliblog (ignoring the significant portion of the month still sitting on the camera’s flash card).

Prepare for some serious pith.

First, a generic bathing shot. They never get old.

My first week of work, our department had an in-house “flea sale” to get rid of all the promotional junk they’d piled up over a year of aggressive campaigning. I got a bunch of silly little stuff, virtually all of it stamped somehow with the Berlingske logo, to add to Molli Malou’s “Christmas Calendar” gift pile. The one I knew she’d like the best was this colorful kiddie umbrella. She wouldn’t let go of it. She wanted to sleep with it. She brought it to vuggestue two days in a row and literally dragged it around until some of the protective rubber coatings on the ends of the long metal stays popped off, transforming her cute umbrella into an eye-piercing instrument of torture. Anyway, share her joy while she had it:

Not that she needed the umbrella to feel joy:

I’ve written about the Christmas Calendar, and I’ve got lots of Christmas Calendar video that you’ll be seeing eventually, so here’s just one Christmas Calendar evening shot without any explanation beyond my stating that I think this picture nails the coziness of our well-run Christmas Calendar nights. (There are no pictures of our poorly-run ones.)

We did Tivoli by night with John, Sandie, and Liam one evening. The crowds were unbearable. But it was still beautiful.

I think I mentioned our trip to the Christmas Tree farm a couple of Sundays ago. The whole way up in the car (45 minutes), we told Molli Malou what fun she’d have riding the pony. She was actually so excited she made up a little “Molli Riding Pony” song to amuse herself in the car. We went straight to the pony ride guy as soon as we got there. “Sorry,” he said, “no more pony rides today.”

Molli Malou took it pretty well, probably because she had no idea what was going on, but even more probably because they got the pony back to work again about fifteen minutes later.

We set up the tree as soon as we got home, I tossed Molli Malou a Santa hat, and was sure I could get one perfect shot of her—maybe even a Christmas-card suitable shot. I couldn’t, but I did get some fun ones.

And I guess I’m wrapping up with these two Christmas Calendar shots from the night she got her Pez dispenser.

There you go, quick and dirty, back on track.

I got my first pay-stub in the mail today, by the way. After some minor deductions for my lunches (23 kroner a day for a veritable feast of a buffet in the canteen), my pension, and some life insurance, I still had a pretty livable wage. Which was then taxed at the appalling rate of 60%.

No lie. No typo. Sixty percent. That is, the government is getting 50% more money out of this job than I am.

The good news is, this is apparently a mistake because when they don’t get a tax card for you they tax you in the highest bracket. And it can be corrected, and my February paycheck will presumably be fattened with January’s erroneous deductions.

The bad news is, I live in a country where there’s actually a bracket that has to pay 60% income tax.

I like to think Americans would resort to pitchforks and brickbats before allowing the government to take more of their money than they themselves get to keep. In Denmark, that course of action only seems open to anarchists occupying other’s people’s property.

(Long story if you’re not up on your Danish news, and I’m going to bed now, so just try a Google search on Ungdomshuset.)