Marching into April

March came in like a lion and, as it usually does in Denmark, it also went out as a lion.  April’s still roaring along as I write this: a polar vortex is dropping down over northern Europe for the next week or two and snow is due to hit in a couple of hours.  So we’re probably not going to see the like of last year’s April photos of the girls frolicking in the sprinkler until May.  Or August.

It’s not chronologically correct but, at some point in March or very early April, Maddie’s class took a field trip off to farming school.  One of the parents or teachers who was along for the trip posted all the pictures from the trip on the class website, so I stole all those with Maddie in them.

A little further out place chronologically is this picture that some (apparently) hateful member of the family sent of Dooly and me experiencing cotemporaneous hair issues from, I’m guessing, the summer of 1984 (on the stairs of the house on Atlantic Avenue).  Worth including as a part of the permanent record if only for Molli and Maddie’s eventual amusement and horror.  I’m guessing that there’s a stud in my left ear, as well: shame I have the unpierced ear to the camera.

Friday nights have been all about Disney Sjov for almost a decade, especially during the cold dark season (ie, most of the year), but those days are behind us now.  Roaring fires, the girls with their fredagsslik (Friday candy), Trine and I with our scotches: nothing said “time to relax” like the opening strains of the Disney Sjov theme song.  We still catch bits of it now and then, but it rarely holds our interest unless there’s a Donald Duck or a Phineas & Ferb: mostly it’s become a prelude to X-Factor.

But X-Factor generates a whole different level of excitement than Disney Sjov ever did:

The deer are running amok in our area these days.  Many a Didi walk is enlivened by a sudden deer spotting.  Can you spot the deer in this picture?

Didi sure could… I’ll zoom it to make it a little easier for you.

I was annoyed to see my phone’s camera roll included literally dozens of pictures of deer that weren’t there.  I’m officially declaring a moratorium on deer pictures unless something spectacular happens.

I had a work function in March that brought me to Det Nye Teater to see their (not very good) production of Chicago.  But the sight of the the theatre brought back so many great memories of Evita that it almost made up for the weakness of the production.

(Almost.)

Here’s  a picture of the inside of our grill.  I opened it up for a good spring cleaning the weekend before my birthday, and this is what it looked like.  It basically fell apart wherever I touched it, so I spent a fair amount of the weekend dismantling it and bringing its ruins to the dump.

It wasn’t a fancy or expensive grill, and its ignition button hadn’t worked since the first Obama administration, but it gave us a lot of delicious food in its 8-year life.  Rest in peace, you old rust bucket.

I love how no stick is ever too big for Didi.

iPhone cameras don’t take very good Super Moon pictures, but I felt I had to commemorate the event because the next time we see one… well, I forget, but my recollection was that it was something Molli and Maddie’s children would be able to share with their children.

Molli’s handball team got to bring out the banners at the start of a professional handball game at some point in mid-March.  Maddie and I watched from home on television.

Molli’s got the away-from-us right corner of the middle banner.

See?

Just kidding.  Until we get one of those CSI cameras that lets you zoom in on regular photographs to bring out detail not found in the original, we’ll have to take it on faith.  (Yes, I’ve zoomed in, and it doesn’t help.)

I think it’s odd that my daughters are growing up in a world where an app on my phone wishes me a happy birthday and gives me virtual candles to blow out. I don’t remember Nana or Pop-Pop ever saying, “Greg, some day when you’re grown up, your phone will wish you a happy birthday!”

Yes, I had another birthday.  They keep happening.

In honor of my birthday, Nana was kind enough to post some pictures that I herewith add to the permanent record.

The sun and the heat are eliciting some unfortunate face-scrunching and shadows, but I think it’s otherwise a great family shot, and one I don’t think Trine or I ever could have imagined back when we lived on the top floor of the building in the background.

Or that Nana and Pop-Pop could in the picture below — taken, if I’m not mistaken and that’s Rego Park, about a mile or two away from the location of the photo above,

On St. Patrick’s Day we sailed for Oslo on the Crown Seaways.  As usual, I looked out at the boat from my office window all day.

And when we checked in to our cabin, I could stare right back at my office.

Seriously.  Second window to the right of the bottom corner of the big open square on the left.

Unlike our voyage last fall, we traveled in style this time, thanks to a favor I did for the DFDS marketing department last summer.  We had two big cabins and complementary champagne!

The following picture must be the moment when Trine reminded the girls that the boat was taking to us to Oslo.

When you think “nordic” these days, you tend think of things like fine design, exquisite cuisine, and a passion for order and efficiency.  The Seven Seas buffet on the Crown Seaways is therefore inexplicable.  I took the picture below just to remind myself of the fact.

The food was ample but not very good.  Fair enough for a mass-market buffet.  The design was ugly but functional, which is also fair enough, I suppose, for what amounts to a giant seaborne food court. But order?  Efficiency?  The food was set out in two long, parallel stations, distributed in an order that could not have been better designed to make people realize they needed something from way down there if they were going to have some of what was right over here.  Lines were formed and followed only until passengers became exhausted by the stupidity of the arrangement, at which point they gave up and started simply walking around to what they wanted without respect to the lines.  Meanwhile, newcomers kept queuing up on both ends of the two long stations expecting orderliness, rolling their eyes and muttering under their breath at the disorderly “cheaters,” until they too became exasperated, turned to freelancing, and in turn began exasperating still more newcomers.  It was amazing there weren’t fistfights.

The whole problem could be solved with a few moments’ effort and a couple of signs.  But maybe DFDS has decided the hassle and anarchy of the buffet will drive passengers to its more costly sit-down restaurants?

Maddie was delighted to spent our outbound night lying in bed and reading in the kids’ cabin while Trine, Molli, and I watched a horribly violent movie (Taken) in ours.

And Saturday morning, sure enough, there was that insipid city.

What do you think of Oslo, Maddie?

I took the picture below stealthily:

Stealth was required because the artist was standing to the right, just out of frame.  We’re in the middle of Oslo, here, and there’s that very picturesque church, and other picturesque stuff all around us, and in the middle of all that picturesqueness, I couldn’t get over the pictures this “artist” was trying to sell.  I didn’t want to talk to him, though, because I didn’t know how I could keep a straight face, so I had to act as though I were taking a picture of the church and just “accidentally” getting his masterpieces in frame.

So I could then zoom in and share them with you:

They were just so eye-punchingly awful I almost wanted to buy one, but I didn’t want to encourage the artist.  Is it bad of me to use the girls’ blog to mock some well-intentioned artist?  Then I revel in my badness… just like the artist does.

For the record, though?  If we’re going to be serious?  Even this pablum is better than about eighty percent of “modern art,” and if I had to choose I’d prefer “badly painted big-eyed cats under umbrella” then a lot of the crap that passes for genius these days.  In fact, I bet if the artist grew some interesting facial hair, did his hair up all crazy, wore outrageous clothes, glued dollars and euros and crowns onto his paintings, and declared himself to be the vanguard of “ironic reinterpretation of iconic commercialism” or something, this shit would be hanging up in museums.

Er… if it’s not already.  Maybe I should have bought one!

But while I stood there thinking these kinds of dark thoughts about art and culture, suddenly the world astonished me with its own weird beauty:

The doors to the church in the pictures above were impressive.  I’m sure it’s all historically important or something, but it’s Oslo so I didn’t bother taking notes.

(De rene av hjeret means the pure of heart, and de barmhjertige means the compassionate.  Each panel around the doors was thus captioned, but I couldn’t really figure out the theme: it wasn’t the cardinal virtues or deadly sins or ten commandments or anything else I could lump together neatly.)

That’s one of the many H&M’s in downtown Oslo, and it seems to be where we spend most of our time (and money) in Norway.

We also made the obligatory visit to a Joe & The Juice.

I never in a million years would have guessed back at Carnegie that I would some day be able to read Ibsen in the original.

I wanted a picture of this youth house because the graffiti cracked me up, but while I was framing my shot some people walked into it and, I feared, ruined it… but then I realized I loved the juxtaposition of women in burkas against a backdrop of stupid youthful anti-western slogans.

We reached a neighborhood of Oslo we’d never been to before because it offered a fancy food court called Mathallen (“the food hall”) — think Fanueil Hall in Boston, or Torvehallene here in Copenhagen.  We went there because I saw a review online that said one of its seafood booths sold whale meat, and I was as determined as ever to taste whale.

Unfortunately, I was informed by the seafood people that did indeed normally offer it, it was “out of season.”  I didn’t realize whale was seasonal.

But Mathallen was the first place in the world outside of Beaune, France, where I’ve ever seen Trou du Cru cheese.  I’d had some when visiting Suzanne Grosso back in the 90s and had loved it, but had never seen it since.  I therefore bought some and found my taste in cheese has evolved.  A lot.  What had in 1996 seemed incredibly strong and aromatic to me was, in 2017, kind of bland and dull.  Not bad, but not the gastronomical wonder I remembered.

Some shots of Mathallen itself.  It was actually a great find, with foods of all kinds at strangely affordable prices.  I’d go again, and I’d recommend it to anyone visiting.

Unfortunately, there was so much to choose from that we couldn’t agree what we wanted — except for Maddie, who got a little tray of sushi we made her bring with us while we looked for somewhere the rest of us could agree on something.

As usual, we could only agree on greasy burgers and fries at a little dive on some little street opposite the “pygmy cathedral” you see in the picture above.

Then we very happily made our way back to the boat to leave Oslo behind us.

I should mention that Maddie and I spent most of our free time on the boat swimming in the indoor pool and enjoying the hot-tub.  We swam first thing every morning, last thing every night, and before and after every meal.

On our return trip, DFDS had booked us a steak dinner at their onboard steakhouse.  The steaks were fantastic!

A walled-off function area was occupied by a wedding party; the girls loved seeing the bride give her toast.

I don’t remember why, but the girls wanted pictures of me making frowny faces.

(I include the following just to show I wasn’t actually all frowny.)

It’s always nice to come home, but Nordhavn doesn’t really show Copenhagen in its best light.

My big birthday present was, surprisingly enough, a brand new grill, which I put together within an hour of our return home.

The following weekend we babysat Linus and Johan for Frederik and Kirsten, and the kids got along wonderfully, as they always do.  The trip to the local candy store for some fredagsslik  was a little more anarchic than usual.

It was also a good reminder that boys play a little rougher than girls — or that girls play rougher when playing with boys.

In a single forty-five minute period, Molli’s handball goal got smashed (replacement piece still eagerly awaited from the mail), and the swing set finally gave up the ghost.

The swingset really just kind of leaned way over toward the street.  Unusable, but still semi-upright.  It seemed dangerous like that, though, so there in the cold and dark I dismantled it enough to prevent anyone from even thinking about using it.  I could barely see what I was doing, but figured I could just kind of collapse it all in a way that would discourage from anyone from trying to use it or play on it.

Here’s how it looked Saturday morning when I wandered out with a cup of coffee to see what Id actually done:

Why did it collapse?

Hm.  Maybe that had something to do with it… and I suppose we’re all lucky no one was hurt when it finally did collapse, which it very clearly would have very soon anyway.

So I completely removed it and filled in the holes.

…which was kind of a heartbreaker, but also a relief: I’d been planning to replace it with a newer, less rickety model for years, and this finally forced the upgrade on me.

Or would have, if the girls hadn’t suggested we not even bother replacing it.  Or that we replace it not with a new swing set, but a nice hammock.

No more Disney Sjov.  No more swingset.  What’s happening?  Molli Malou has spend at least half an hour of almost every night for the past seven years on her swing.  How could she be so indifferent to its demise?

Stop growing up so fast, dammit!  Stop it right now!

Ah, well.

# # #

Maddie: “Your hair looks really good today, Daddy.”

Me: “Thanks!  Take a picture so I can see and remember how to cut it next time!”

Maddie lets Trine take the picture because Maddie can’t see the top of my head from way down there.  I get this picture:

Great hair, right?  Just extraordinary!  Maddie’s enthusiasm does make me wonder how it looks normally if the above was an exceptional hair day…

As for these pictures:

I took them thinking this was the start of something, because for about a week Maddie was running out to skateboard at every opportunity.

And then, of course, the skateboard’s been gathering dust ever since.

(Pennyboard.  Sorry, I meant the pennyboard.)

Sunset behind the trees down by Søndergårdvej:

As seen on Facebook: March 28 marked the 14th anniversary of our arrival in Denmark — the date on which we moved into the apartment you see below (which picture was taken within an hour or so of our arrival).

And my favorite SMS of all time from DSB, I had to share it:

The message on the bottom says that, unfortunately, the express train isn’t running “due to there having arisen a lack of functioning trains and engineers.”

Apple tree hair cut time:

The weather did turn tolerably less than awful for a few days in early April.

The ubiquitous forsythia burst into life.

And I was reminded, walking to Nørreport Station with a friend one evening, that Copenhagen still has its charms after all these years.

Molli Malou spent the weekend leading into Easter vacation on a field trip to Lalandia down in Rødby.  That Sunday was the close-out dance performance for Maddie’s dance school, CPH Dans, held at Farum Arena.

I shared both her dances in full on Facebook, in the Family Group.

Each of her group’s dances was about two minutes long.  They were cute numbers: the first was a contemporary hit, the second Popcorn.  Maddie danced very well, and some of the other group’s dances were fun to watch, but there were close to 100 performances, with Maddie’s slots coming 43rd and 92nd (roughly: 40-somethingth and 90thish if you’re a stickler for accuracy).  And they were all two minutes long.  And there were little delays between them.  And there was even a special guest performance for about 15 or 20 minutes in the middle of it all:

So most of the afternoon was spent killing time waiting for Maddie’s numbers.  She spent most of the first wait sitting with her friends and watching the other groups, but after the first performance even she was a little bored.

We went out to a nearby playground.

Molli got home the next day, Monday, around noon, while I was at work.  She called me within about half an hour of getting home.  I was so excited!  I’d missed her and we’d hardly spoken to her at all over the long weekend so I was overjoyed that she’d actually wanted to call me and tell me she was home.

Except really she was just calling to ask if she could eat the soft pretzel that was on the kitchen counter.

Sigh.

I gave her permission to eat half (it was a soft pretzel!).


Less than an hour later, I got this photo from Trine via SMS, along with the caption: “I wasn’t standing on it!”  (The attribution was unstated but obviously to Molli, who has been told several thousand times in two languages not to stand on the bidet, which she likes to do to admire herself in the mirror.)

But losing half a soft pretzel and a bathroom appliance is a small price to pay to have our Molli back in the house!  … at least for a couple of days.  The following Thursday she boarded a bus for Holstebro, where her handball team spent the weekend competing for the Holstebro Cup.  They won four out of the five games they played; unfortunately, the one loss came to Holstebro in the semi-finals; Holstebro went on to win the silver.

Meanwhile we need to thank Aunt Deb and Sophie for a Hofstra visit that took a detour down memory lane: I had to add these pictures to the permanent record.

We start with the house on Locust Avenue, the first place I remember living.  That garage is where Aunt Deb and I were hit by lightning.  We lived there until I was about 7, I think.

Across the street from the house, Port Washington Library, which was built while we lived there.  While they were doing construction on the parking lot, tearing all the land up before paving it over, I dropped a doll into one of the holes.  It was too deep for me to go after it.  Pop-Pop said it was too deep even for him.  Family rumor says Pop-Pop just didn’t like me having a doll… but whatever the truth is, the doll is surely buried under that parking lot to this day.

And looking across the lot is what used to be Main Street School.  My first grade glass with the dread Mrs Resnick was in the room behind the windows to the left of that door to the street.

The first pool I remember swimming in is this one: the Port Washington Yacht Club swimming pool.

And here’s the PWYC tennis court, where Aunt Deb and I spent countless summer hours hanging around waiting for Nana to finish playing.  Or not: more likely we were hanging out at the pool.

Aunt Deb even got a shot of the jungle gym behind our second house in Port Washington, on Oakland Drive.  That’s where we lived until we moved to Massachusetts right before my tenth birthday.

At the end of Oakland Drive was Muriel Road, and the houses here belonged to the Tiffanys (left) and Carmodys (right).

And here’s Aunt Deb her own self in front of the house we lived in all those years ago!

And to accompany all those pictures from April 2017, here’s one from, well, as much as 45 years earlier.

So we’re all caught up from March and April.  Let’s hope by the time of my next update these stupid April showers are pushing up May flowers!

In fact let’s hope Copenhagen can give us a beautiful May, since Nana and Pop-Pop will be visiting!