We’ve been very busy since the last post, but it hasn’t been a very eventful period. Which is fine: after that summer, who the hell wants more events?
Fall vacation—efterårsferie—came and went, Molli Malou got her driver’s permit, and I changed jobs. Also, James T. Kirk made it into outer space. (I consider that an event.)
Molli spent a chunk of her efterårsferie up in Sweden with a bunch of friends. When in Sweden, eat like a Swede:
And once again, they drove through the animal preserve or national park or whatever on their way home.
Molli brought home some Swedish treats, including a family-sized bag of some kind of spicy cheetos or cheese curls or something. She very kindly opened the bag when she got home that Sunday evening and allowed her parents to taste a few. They were spicy. Cheesy. Crunchy.
When I got up at five the next morning to get ready for work, Didi was behaving oddly: she wasn’t following me around waiting for her breakfast, but was barking to be let out. So I let her out for a few minutes while I got ready, and let her back in the house before I left for the day.
Trine texted me a little later: Didi had been acting strangely with her, too. Drinking much more water than normal, constantly barking to be let outside.
Then she sent me a picture that explained it all:
That’s the bag of spicy cheese snacks—empty.
And obviously not where we’d left it.
The idiot dog had eaten the whole bag, minus the 5 or 6 pieces Trine and I had tasted the night before.
We laughed about it.
But neither of us thought to tell Molli, who was outraged to come home from school and find the bag of cheese snacks in the garbage. Didn’t we know they were hers? And she had been nice enough to offer us a few, and we finished the whole bag without even asking?
You’d think we’d learn from an episode like that.
Just a couple of weeks later I brought home a bunch of leftovers from the candy I’d brought to PensionDanmark for my last day of work there. I had set them in a bowl on the sofa table. A lot of loose gummy candies and a number of wrapped caramels, toffees, and chocolates.
Which we left on the table overnight… only to find an empty bowl lying on its side the next morning.
So clearly we did not learn from the first episode.
Neither did Didi.
(Or maybe she did: she gave no signs of gastric distress that day, so apparently the sugary candies and wrappers hadn’t been as hard on her innards as the spicy cheese snacks had been.)
Here’s Molli within moments of getting her driver’s permit.
I love that pride.
We let her drive us to the McDonald’s in Ballerup for a celebratory milkshake (Maddie’s look is priceless):
And we’re off!
Furesø hosted a handball tournament one weekend and although I was only able to attend one of Maddie’s games, I did get this great shot of her making a penalty shot.
One October evening we went to the restaurant Figaro in Tivoli for moules frites. No special occassion: just a chance to get moules frites on the cheap thanks to our Tivoli cards.
The apple tree didn’t deliver many apples this fall, but at least one grew to perfection. (I think others did as well, but we weren’t good about harvesting them so I think the only beneficiary was ultimately Didi.)
We try to let Molli drive as often as possible now. It’s hard to get used to. Didn’t she just learn to ride a bike like three months ago?
Fog rolled in so thick one morning that the view from Langelinie was of… nothing:
And note for the permanent record: I passed my 5000th kilometer in October.
That’s 3106 miles—eleven more miles than the distance from Boston to San Francisco.
Also for the permanent record: a very common scene on a Friday or Saturday night. Trine and I will be watching a movie or something and get into a bag of flæskesvære—and suddenly find ourselves swarmed by our pets. (Open bags of flæskesvær are never left on tables, counters, or shelves unattended, much less overnight.)
One of Maddie’s recent works:
By the end of October it was still pitch dark out when I got to Langelinie, but earlier in the month there were some glorious sunrises as I neared the water.
But even then I was already at my desk by the time the sun finally rose fully above the horizon.
Earlier I mentioned Captain Kirk’s trip into space as one of the “events” of this month. And for me it was. I watched the whole thing as it streamed live, from the countdown through the flight to the landing and deboarding.
It’s one of the first times in my adult life where I felt like the wild future I imagined in childhood was actually somewhat realized. Captain Kirk actually made it into outer space.
About a week after getting her paper permit, Molli’s license arrived in the mail (it’s still just a permit, but on her birthday next year it’ll miraculously transform into a real license).
One evening not long after Trine and Maddie had driven off somewhere together, I got a desperate call from Maddie:
“Go outside! Right now! Go look! It’s the most amazing rainbow ever!”
And she was actually right. The pictures don’t do it justice—it was bright, colorful, sharp, and radiant, but comes out kind of dull and colorless in the pictures.
Thanks to my iPhone 12’s wide angle option I was able to to capture the full rainbow: I don’t think I’ve ever before seen the full arc of a rainbow.
A note for the permanent record: it was in October that the foyer lights finally got “fixed”—no longer tied to motion sensors or timers. So the controls here have been by passed and they’re just normal lights now. Turn ’em on, turn ’em off.
One morning at about 5:55 on my way out the door I found Didi sleeping like this, like a little kid who just got her first ball for Christmas and couldn’t bear to let it go.
Another note for the permanent record: October was the month the dryer motor died. (And, thank god, got replaced under warranty.)
October was my last month at PensionDanmark, and I felt that keenly. So there are more pictures than usual of the view from Langelinie.
Here’s one that appears to be God or aliens looking down on Refshaløen:
And here’s another pretty (industrial) sunrise:
While we were slogging through our busy but mostly routine autumn, Aunt Deb was down in Estero clearing out the condo.
Surreal.
I don’t like having that picture here, but it’s part of the record. It was a thing that happened. It can’t be pretended away.
But that can’t be the last image of the post, so all the more reason to include my favorite memes of the month. First, a real-world “meme”—they’ve got this hanging up in PensionDanmark’s IT department:
And an online meme that still makes me giggle:
Like I said up top: not a very eventful month. Not a very photogenic month.
Here’s hoping the month ahead is just as uneventful, but maybe a little more photogenic.
