Ends of Eras

I’m posting this on the evening of July 31.

As such, it is the end of Trine’s era as a physiotherapist in Amager: her 70-minute one way commute by car through central Copenhagen will, effective tomorrow, now be an eight-minute bike ride across Vøærløse.

It is the end of my era as a “Data and Database Marketing Manager” at Nordisk Film: starting tomorrow morning, I am a “Business Engineer” at Issuu.

Meanwhile, as you will see, we have also come to the end of Maddie’s era as a pacifier-suckler. She has also–but you will not actually see this–come to the end of the era of wearing diapers to bed.

Ot’s therefore important for me to wrap up our summer in this post tonight: to help us bundle the past, assign it to its place, and embark on our new adventures tomorrow.

That’s the sign at Tivoli for the “Demon” rollercoaster. It’s there to remind me of the glorious day where I indulged myself for a couple of hours alone at Tivoli. It was a nice moment for me and I thought it would be nice to keep it in there as a reminder to myself that very good things can come out of bad circumstances.

But enough about me. Let’s get Maddie to the Suttetræ (The Pacifier Tree)! First things first: all pacifiers in the house rounded up and bagged with a note to the tree? Check!

Can we get a close-up on that Danglish note?  (Which Daddy wrote but Maddie signed.)

And look!  We have company as we enter Frederiksberg Garden!  What a coincidence!

For once we remembered to bring some stale bread.

Between all the pictures I have of Hannah and Sophie feeding ducks in Essex, and all the pictures of Molli Malou and Maddie gawking at or feeding the birds of Frederiksberg, I have decided enough is enough.  We may still feed and gawk at the fowls, but no more pictures.

Anyway, it’s time for the big event.  Lay on, MacMaddie!

Okay, tying it up herself didn’t quite work out.  So mor comes in for a little help.

And that’s that!

Of course Maddie through a fit that night, though she didn’t quite get the DTs.  She asked for the sut a little insistently the next day, as well, and that bedtime was also tough.  The third night she was still asking for it by dinner time and fussed a little for it in bed, but that was pretty much that.  Done.

Oh!  End of another era: the era of not knowing what to do with the big garden in the backyard.  You know, this one:

It was just so choked with weeds, and they came back however diligently we tried to root them out, so we finally came up with an alternative solution.

And that’s where it stands today.  A couple more summer Sundays and it’ll be wiped clear.  Then we’ll grass it over for next year, then tile it and put up some elevated planters in 2014.  Yeah, that’s what homeowning has done to Greg and Trine: they plan yardwork two years in advance.  Yay.

But some yardwork comes on a faster timetable — like Trine’s urgent call from Kvickly Saturday morning: “The trampoline we wanted is on sale again!”

A mere six hours of back-breaking assembly later:

Flashback!  I forgot to unload one of the cameras back in May and found I had taken like fifty pictures of Mette with her nieces — in the usual (doomed) effort to try and get both girls looking good and sane and happy in a picture with any third party.  Mette, I’ll find a way to get them ALL to you in their full-size format, but they’re a lot of fun as a series, so here we go with a small sampling:

Wait, wait!  One more era ended: that fabulous warm and sunny week we like to refer to as “the Danish summer.”  Yes, it came in late July this year, and we’re already back to cooler temps and regular rainstorms.  But as Maddie will show you, we sure made the best of it while it was here:

And that was the summer that was.

And the eras that were.

Hear that?  It’s the sound of all those doors closing behind us as the new ones swing open…