Spring, Probably

March had been a snowy disaster, spiritually alleviated by a visit from Hannah but otherwise bleak: as cold, windy, and snow-swept a March as I’ve seen in Denmark.  The prospects for early April suggested that even after March coiming and going like a lion, the fourth month would live up to its billing as the “cruellest month.”

I wrapped up the previous post by noting that both girls’ handball teams had qualified for the finals of the Hillerød Påskecup tournament.  Although I’d spent most of the long weekend at home by myself, I couldn’t miss the chance to see both girls playing in tournament championships, so of course I made it up to see them.

Hillerød is a pretty little city about twenty minutes north of us.  It’s probably the second biggest city of northern Sjælland, after Helsingør.  I’d guess it’s smaller than Salem, but it has the same feel of being a picturesque little village that grew just a little more than it should have: it is both charming and unwieldy.

Which is entirely irrelevant to the Easter Cup (that’s what Påskecup means).  All that mattered in that respect was their sizeable sports hall with its many venues.

Maddie had the first game: I didn’t get any good shots of her game, unfortunately: just a lot of blurry slop, so we’ll have to take this one:

(That’s Maddie in the center; I think the girls had just rushed up on offense and Maddie’s passing to one of her teammates.)

They kept it pretty close, but unfortunately they lost the game and had to settle for the silver.  Her’s Maddie accepting her medal:

The older teams are treated a little more seriously: the 14-and-under girls’ championship began with the teams and players being introduced with a rollicking light show and blaring music.

Each player was introduced individually, by name.  Molli was introduced in a way that sounded like “Molli Nah-gone.”  In a lifetime of hearing our name mispronounced, it was the first time I’d ever heard that particular variant.

No great pictures from her game, either, but at least a couple of non-blurry shots where she’s recognizable (#34).

Alas, they, too, lost their game and had to settle for silver medals.

One interesting thing about the day as a whole is that Maddie had been going crazy taking wild shots that had no chance of succeeding, and her coach had to tell her to restrain herself a little, while Molli had hardly taken any shots at all and her coach had to tell her to shoot, shoot, shoot!

The next weekend was the annual container weekend, so I spent it cutting the hell out of everything.

…but I still managed to find time to walk Didi down by the lake.  (As you can see, it was very sunny and clear, but it was quite chilly.)

We bumped into our old friends:

And at last I began chipping away at the big spring project: preparing the old sauna space for its new life as another full bathroom.

Having smashed up most of the concrete floor already, it was time to start dismantling the wall to accommodate a new window.

I’m going to include a lot of pictures of this project, but will try to keep the commentary to a minimum since it doesn’t have much to do with the glorious heroes of this blog.

(Digression: that afternoon Trine and I had to do some stuff at Bymidten, and we ran across an event with the Danish children’s television character Skæg (“Beard”), whose shows about numbers and letters had some big fans in our house once upon a time.  Neither of our heroines were with us, but I love this picture of one girl trying to get her shy sister to talk to Skæg.

Once again we had to attend Maddie’s dance finale.  This time instead of Farum it was out in Brøndby, and it was just as big and crazy an event as last year’s.

Once again, I have to sheepishly confess to blowing it: the picture above shows Maddie’s group just about to begin their number.  Its a picture.  As I’ve mentioned.  But it was supposed to be a video.  I held the camera for the whole number, and thought I’d captured it all for posterity.  But I hadn’t.  I’d taken a single stupid frame.

But at least I managed to get some pictures of their group shot (Maddie is back row, fourth from the right, in front of the “d” in dans.)

After her opening number we came back home so the girls could take a break and I could get back to work on the window.

…So this pic of the girls getting ready for their second number is courtesy of Trine.  (The other girls are Maddie’s friends and classmates Emilie, Alma, and Emma.)

Here’s Maddie with a girl I don’t recognize. 

And here’s Molli a little surprised to see the big old hole that had suddenly appeared in our house.

Maddie got some new rollerblades early in the month, and for a while she was skating along with me each evening as I walked Didi.

Didi and I both enjoyed it.

And some evenings, Maddie didn’t even skate.

…she skipped.

By now I think we’d reached about the middle of April, and the weather was beginning to show signs of not being entirely awful.  Optimistic, we brought the grill out of hibernation.

And the longer days let us have a little more outdoor fun in the evening, even if it wasn’t quite warm yet.

And then, quite abruptly, spring announced itself.

Oh!  Guess what I found while dismantling the brick wall to make room for the new window?  A 30-year-old bottle cap in the masonry!

I spent more time than I like to think about in April (and then May) sanding down bricks.  First the exposed bricks still in the walls…

…and then the bricks I’d removed from the wall, in order that they might be used again to frame the new window.  But more on that later.

Another ongoing spring 2018 project: resuscitation of the lawn, which Molli’s daily handball practice had reduced to a muddy track.

And now, apparently, it’s “later” already.  Here’s “Greg’s Workshop,” where I spend many, many hours sanding the masonry off the old bricks.  We figured 80 would do the trick.

And by now the weather was getting very nice.  Suddenly the grill felt natural instead of defiant.

Didi and I walk(ed) by this tree down at the bottom of Søndersø park more or less every day for four years.  It took just one inattentive trucker a mere moment to knock it down.

I’m so damn proud of my brick sanding work.  Here are my first 54.

And here’s Molli on her way to her first Confirmation party.

It was the first party she was ever invited to where she was going to be offered alcohol.

She says she didn’t have any.  To speak of.  Really.  Hardly.  (I picked her up, and it seemed if anything she and her friends were wildly high on sugar rather than alcohol.)

More trimming: I really went berserk this season, I wanted to get all almost our plants down under two meters.

A note for the permanent record: we had decided in March that instead of having take-out pizza or burgers every Friday, we would switch to a program of eating normal dinners three Fridays in a row, then going out to dinner at a nice restaurant every fourth weekend.

Our first such dinner was at Sticks & Sushi down in Frederiksberg.

I include that picture because the last time I’d gone down that street on foot, Maddie didn’t exist and I’d been pushing Molli in her barnevogn.  And I swear to god, it was just a few weeks ago…!

Maddie decided to give beer another try.

Results: the same.

The mason came by and told us we hadn’t removed enough bricks.  That sucked.

But the fact that the mason was talking to us meant the window was not far off, so it was time to finish smashing out the floor in order that we might clear out the rubble through the big hole in our wall, instead of having to pass it out through a window (dangerous!) or through the house (complicated and messy!).

I think we did a great job!

Finally, one of the last days of April, we were visited by Badbussen, or “The Bath Bus.”  It’s just a bath showroom on wheels, really, but it was a pretty cool thing to have pull up in front of the house.

Maddie loved it.

(For the record, we were all four agreed on two tile colors: a rustic gray and a rustic black, both in the 60×60 cm size.  And a wall-mounted toilet, a sink with big shelf space, and a big old bathtub with tile wrapped around it.)

The bus guy is the sort-of-brother-in-law of the VVS (plumbing) guy who’s a sponsor of Værløse handball and the father of a girl on Molli’s team.  And he’s coming again tomorrow (May 9) to show us some exciting ideas he had about a design that gives us a better bathroom than we’d imagined by moving the showers to a different part of the bathroom.  We find that exciting.  How old are we?

And that’s pretty it for April.

The best event of all was something that didn’t readily lend itself to photography: the bill that, when passed into law, is going to make me a citizen of Denmark was introduced into parliament.

Yes, it takes the proverbial “act of Congress” (or Parliament) to make one a Danish citizen.

So here’s a screenshot of its status in late April:

What it’s saying, for those of you whose Danish is a little rusty, is that it was introduced on the floor on April 19, and had its first “treatment” (handling/debate/negotiation) on April 26.  It was then referred back to committee, where it was scheduled for a second “treatment” on May 29 and a third on June 1.  Under the Danish constitution (Grundlov), a bill has to be “treated” three times–and referred back to committee at least once–before it can become a law suitable for the Queen’s signature.

So basically there’ll be a law ready for her majesty’s John Hancock on June 1, and it is very literally a law with my name on it (see #1222):

It would therefore appear that sometime in June I’ll be a Danish citizen at last!

But before we get to June we still have to get through May.  I can already tell you the May blog is going to be a veritable photographic smorgasbord of the Lee visit, along with excessive additional photographs of the New Bathroom Window project (today is May 8, and we’re not out of the woods yet).

And that’s just what I’ve got in my camera so far.  We still have two holiday weekends ahead of us (the four-day Ascension weekend this week, and Whitsunday the following weekend), as well as the (probably not very photographed) birthdays of Didi (May 11) and Hannah and Morfar (May 18).

And, of course, more handball courtesy of the Furesø Cup.

So there’s plenty to look forward to.  Stay tuned!