Season of Champions...Snowbirds & Sunbirds

This blog covers the period from mid January through late February, or what scientists call “the middle of f—ing winter” (surely it’s no coincidence that Valentine’s day itself is in the heart of the coldest time of year).

I promised more on the men’s handball World Championship, which featured so prominently in the last post, and we’ll get to that, but first some very local handball.

I don’t post many pictures of the girls’ coaches, but I have to make an exception for Maddie’s new coach, because I just love her.

(Not a great shot, but considering I was up in the rafters on the other side of the court, I think it’s all right. I took a lot of pictures of the new coach–hope I didn’t creep her out!)

It was a rough defeat for Værløse: they opened with a couple of strong goals (by Maddie) and closed with some great defensive goal-keeping (by Maddie), but in between the other team scored too much, and Maddie couldn’t score from goal (this week).

But here are a couple of shots of the world’s most adorable goalkeeper:

In its full size, something about the loneliness of goalkeeping jumped out of me from the picture above. So I tried it out in black and white, and I love the result (not as striking all shrunk down for the blog, but I still love it and will have to print it).

Meanwhile, as we saw in the last post, the Danish national men’s handball team had defeated France to reach the finals of the World Championship… against Norway, of all countries. Norway had defeated Germany on their side of the semis.

Norway scored first, and we found that troubling.

For a while.

Within a few minutes, Denmark had pulled ahead.

And they kept pulling further ahead.

…to the extent that it was over before it was even over.

To the extent that Mikkel Hansen–frequently acknowledged as the greatest handball player in the world–was rooting his teammates on from the bench.

What made the victory especially sweet was that it was a home game. The championship had been co-hosted by Germany and Denmark, and the final was played at “The Box” out in Jylland.

And so the trophy was handed to the team by. . . the Crown Prince of Denmark.

An iconic moment for little Denmark!

The match was on a Sunday–fortunately the Sunday between the NFL Conference Championships and the Super Bowl, so for once we had no sports conflicts. That Tuesday, Copenhagen honored the team at Rådhusplads.

Such crowds are not for me, but Trine and Maddie made the trek in and managed to be part of that teeming mass of adoring fans.

And so: Denmark is the reigning world champion of men’s handball!

Moving on, I have no idea what the actual school assignment was, but here is Maddie’s collage.

In the middle of a collage about style and fashion, you paint your face green and headline yourself “WEIRD?” I love it.

And here is a note I found by the coffee machine one dark winter morning at 5:00:

(In case her handwriting is easier for me than you to read, it says “I accedentall thought it was 6:30 whe it was 3:30… Didi has been fed annnnd I can’t go to sleep again because I put on my colthes and I got use [to] the light.” (I think we can all forgive some sloppy spelling given the hour.)

I hurried (quietly) to Maddie’s room, and contrary to her note she lay fast asleep in her bed.
Fully dressed in her colthes.

And we had a major milestone: the guest bathroom was done!

(Almost done: we still need toilet roll and towel holders.)

I found Maddie’s wish list for 2019 — the better part of a year before her birthday or Christmas, so the girl is definitely planning ahead.

“Things I want to buy (hope I get) in the course of 2019: hoop earrings (Plaza), Purse (Neye/Zalando), brand name clothes (Cool Company/Zalando).”

So now you know. Shop accordingly.

We also did some redecorating of her room. I didn’t take any before pictures and can’t even remember what we changed (her desk, I think, and the clutter), but here are the after pics.

And now it’s another sleepy sports Sunday in Denmark…

Or it was: by the time I took that picture we were into the first half hour of Monday morning.

What was I doing up so crazy late on a Sunday?

As they say, “If it’s the first Sunday in February, it’s a Pats game.” Some day they won’t be saying that any more. And I’ll be sad. But we’re not at that point yet.

I only included Gladys because last year I posted a picture of the national anthem singer and then went dark on the Super Bowl. I thought of that even as I snapped the picture above: I thought, “Please, universe, do not let that be the only picture from this game I can bring myself to post in the girls’ blog which really shouldn’t have photos of television sports on it anyway.”

And I wondered: is this the last time I’ll see this guy in a Pats uniform?

And about 3½ hours later, I thought, Am I ever not gonna see this guy in a Super Bowl?

This is my blog. I can use it to preserve things I want to preserve, even if the girls have nothing to do with it. Sorry, future Molli and Maddie, but as the kid from Teletubbies said, “Those are the wules.”

We had, by the way, decorated the house to make it festive for the game, but I didn’t get any pictures of it the night of the game, so here’s a shot from the morning:

And let me add for the record that it looks like the official verdict on that game is going to be that it was one of the most boring Super Bowls ever. I’ll grant it wasn’t the most exciting, but I’ve never been so tense through a whole game — I mean, either of these offenses is capable of scoring three touchdowns in two minutes on the game clock, and they put up three points between them in the whole first half. At any moment, the game could have gone in any direction. And it didn’t. It just kept simmering, and we all knew it could boil over on any given play.

Tense!

(Just felt a dose of Didi was overdue.)

The weekend after Super Sunday was the start of the girls’ winter vacation. We all had different plans and schedules.

Molli would be leaving very early Monday morning for a skiing trip to Norway with Selma’s family.

Trine would be taking the week off to stay home and relax and do fun stuff with Maddie.

I would be working Monday then taking off for Florida on Tuesday.

Because her departure was going to be so early Monday morning, Molli slept over at Selma’s (across the street) Sunday night: we would not see her again for a week!

We said our goodbyes there in the foyer, and Molli crossed the street.

I awoke for work at the usual hour of 5:00. I wasn’t surprised to see Trine standing in the hallway in her bathrobe when I emerged from the shower; it happens sometimes. Live long enough with someone, and you’re bound to bump into them in the hallway now and then, even at peculiar times. But what did surprise me was to see her smiling so ebulliently, blue eyes a-twinkle with delight.

“I got to say goodbye!” she cooed.

“We said goodbye last night,” I said.

“I’ve been up since four o’clock. I couldn’t bear it. I had to say goodbye.”

Such maternal devotion deserves to be chronicled, and so it has been. (It doesn’t mean I don’t love you as much as Mor does, Molli!)

But it doesn’t end there.

I got a call at work from Trine several hours later.

“She called from Helsingør,” she said. “They were waiting for the ferry to Sweden and Molli realized she’d left her new ski jacket in their living room. I had to bring it up to her. But we don’t have a key to their house, so I had to go to the neighbors who do have a key, borrow it from them, go into the house, get Molli’s jacket, drive 40 minutes up to Helsingør and give it to her. . . then drive home and return the key. And here I am.”

“You got to say goodbye again!” I said.

She didn’t seem as excited about it this time, though.

# # #

Meanwhile, we had rotated the dining room table 90 degrees a few weeks earlier on a probationary basis, and had slid it closer to the solarium windows. Having decided we liked it, I moved the overhead lamps appropriately and now it’s permanent. We have a new look.

Another new look: this is what the train ride in was like the first Monday of winter vacation week:

Yes, an entire car to myself! And it remained that way almost halfway to downtown.

We finally got some of the glass shower panels up during this period, but not the door. And there were questions about whether the panels could support the door without additional support. Those questions have still not been answered, so what you see here is, alas, more or less what we’re living with as I write this.

Molli was sweet enough to send us pictures from Norway.

Tuesday morning, Trine and Maddie drove me into town for my trip to the airport because they were on their way to Tivoli, which is now open for a few weeks in February with a Valentine’s theme.

Trine was sweet enough to send me a picture of Maddie enjoying one of the handmade bolcher lollipops.

…and, about fifteen hours after being dropped off by Trine and Maddie at the Fasanvej metro station:

It wouldn’t have been such a bad trip, except that the flight was delayed an hour and then, when I had to swipe my credit card for the rental car, my brain blipped out and I forgot my PIN code. (Yes, singular: I have a whole bunch of cards, and I use them more or less daily, and they all have the same PIN.) This introduced a forty-five minute delay and several calls to Danske Bank’s 24-hour emergency help line.

The two-hour drive from Ft. Lauderdale to Estero wasn’t as bad as I’d feared it might be, and Pop-Pop and Nana were kind enough to provide not just love and affection upon my midnight arrival, but also a bottle of Caol Ila. Ah!

At this point my chronology may seem strange, but I’m blending pictures that were sent me from two locations five thousand miles and six time zones away along with my own, so I think it’s a justifiable confusion. Exhibit A is Molli’s first skiing selfie.

Juxtaposed immediately with swimming pools, palm trees, and…

…rain…

Yes, bad luck: my first full day in Florida was gray and rainy.

This was on Nana and Pop-Pop’s fridge, and I’m just gonna leave it here so we all have a place to go when we want to know exactly what kind of palm tree we’re looking at in the American southeast, but aren’t standing by Nana and Pop-Pop’s fridge, and for some reason have an internet connection but no access to Google.

I never got a satisfactory answer on how to pronounce the name of their community. I hope we can get an answer on my next visit.

The overcast skies were gone the next day.

The clubhouse pool was so inviting, but I never made it up there — the pool across the street was almost always empty, so I didn’t see the point in trekking the whole 200 meters up to the big pool.

Here are some pictures of the Miromar Outlets that I sent back to the family to build their excitement. (Mission accomplished.)

I also had to sent them selfies now and then.

Blue skies and palm trees — even having lived five years in LA, I never stop taking pictures of them.

We managed to make our way to Naples for lunch with the Sperouni one afternoon.

It was very strange and very nice that Beth and Gene were just a (literal) stone’s throw away. I took this shot from the foot of their driveway, which you can see in the foreground. Nana and Pop-Pop’s house is at the very end of the street. So yeah, you’d need a good arm, but I still say: throwing distance.

For an outfielder.

In the hall of fame.

All right, forget the stone’s throw… can we call it a nine-iron chip shot away?

Apart from the location of the door to the master bath, the floor plans are identical. But I had so enjoyed Beth’s deprecations of “that purple wall!” before I’d ever seen it that, having seen it, I had to have a picture.

This cake, shared among five people, lasted three days. In our house I doubt it would have survived three hours.

And now you can all kick my ass, because somehow or other I have pictures of a purple wall, and pictures of a cake, but no pictures of the five human beings having dinner there, or the night before at Nana and Pop-Pops.

I spoiled Winnie with a couple of long walks a day… gave me a chance to stretch my legs and get a look around. Sometimes scenery just jumped out at me, as it did here:

Did I mention that after the first day, the weather was spectacular?

I had many, many pictures of products on my phone, some of which were used to send Trine for confirmation that I’d purchased something, some of which were to ask Trine whether I’d identified the correct item, and still others of which were taken for no discernible reason.

Rather than include any of them, since they’re stupid, I put together a random collage.

I loved the little geckos scrambling around all over.

(Would have loved it less if I’d stepped on any, but I managed to avoid that.)

Nana and Pop-Pop were loaded with bagels when I arrived, but deep into my visit we were running low so I thought I’d load up. Drove 20 minutes to the bagel store one afternoon only to realize that although I’d used technology to find and navigate my way to the place, I hadn’t thought to use any technology to check whether they’d be open.

(Narrator: “They weren’t.”)

Meanwhile, Trine sent me visual confirmation that Molli had safely returned from Norway.

Sunday morning we had brunch at the clubhouse.

Pay no attention to the woman lying prostrate in the picture above — the woman surrounded by concerned onlookers. It was only after I took that picture that we realized there was a medical emergency down by the pool.

But hey, we weren’t trained EMTs, we were just a family hoping to enjoy a nice al fresco brunch.

I made of point of trying to get at least a couple hours of sun and pool time every day. So relaxing, and such pleasant company!

Some pictures are taken for purely aesthetic reasons…

I love this photo, but I may love the frame just a little more.

In the part of Grandezza with private one-family homes, I found this beauty for sale! If we had the money, what a fine winter home this would be!

Aesthetic interruption: morning fog in paradise.

My final hours in Estero were spent poolside. I wanted every last drop of sun I could get!

But of course, I was there more as a son than for the sun, so I kept good company.

And all too quickly, and with far too few people pictures, it was time to go.

Made it back across Alligator Alley without incident, returned the car, checked in, and bellied up to the bar in Terminal 38½, or whatever it was — it was like a three mile hike from security to the gate!