We got some snow last night - first big storm of the season. It's great that we will finally have a white Christmas. And despite ruining a planned birthday party, it was nice of the storm to happen on a Saturday night into Sunday morning so the road crews will have time to clear the roads before I have to go back to work.
On Thanksgiving night, Albie pulled out our Christmas tree from the big box in the basement and started putting it together. It looks even better this year than before with the new floors. I got done early at work Friday and spent most of the night putting up the rest of the decorations (two stockings and lights around the window in the kitchen, Albie's Pharmacy in the window and wreaths and lights on all our railings). Now we are ready!
I was deep in sleep on Saturday morning when Albie comes bursting into the bedroom. "Viiiiih-khan! Get up!" he yells in a panicked voice. "Get up, get up, get up!"
I jump out of bed and stand for a second in the dark, dizzy, trying to figure out what's going on. Albie grabs my shoulders and looks straight into my eyes. "How do you turn the water off on the toilet?"
Immediately, I realize the severity of the situation. I rush into the bathroom. Halfway to the toilet, I notice my feet are already soaked in about an inch of water. Albie stops at the door, throwing down a ton of paper towels behind me.
I turn the little knob and the water stops. (All my plumming experience actually stems from incidents just like this one). Of course, there is still water everywhere - lots of water.
We start throwing old bath towels on the floor, then the hand towels. I refuse to use my nice, new towels. Even if we wash them later, I'm gonna know they've been in "toilet water."
Everything goes in the tub - for now. While Albie is wiping up the last of the water, I get to work on the toilet issue with a plunger and a bucket of hot water. A few minutes later, we are good to go.
We wipe down the whole bathroom to get the toilet smell out of it. I wash my hands, vigorously, and head back to bed. After all, it's only 11 a.m.
"At least I don't have to clean the bathroom today," I think as I slide back under my warm blanket. I mentally check it off my to-do list and fall back asleep.
So in addition to starting a new job less than a week ago, we are also having new floors installed. The guys are coming tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. to start. In order to get ready, Albie and I had to rip out all the ugly, green wall-to-wall carpet and the foam underneath. To be nice, we also pulled up all the little pieces of nail-strips that held the carpet in place.
The floor guys will tear up the particle board, which will just crumble since it consists of glued-together sawdust. I am hoping to be out of the house when they start and will probably just have a glimpse of their progress before I pass out for the night.
The good news is that in 3-4 days, we will have brand new hardwood floors. Bye, bye ugly carpet! We won't miss you a bit!
For the first time since I got my Ford Focus last year, I decided to clean it. Don't get me wrong - I take out the trash every once in a while that I've thrown behind the driver's seat, but it was time for a vacuum and wipe-down.
Since the car didn't come with any rugs and I've been too cheap and too lazy to go find some that fit my car, all the dirt from this past winter has gathered near and under the front seats. I thoroughly vacuumed all the floors.
Then came the more difficult project - finding out what would get the tree sap off my hood and windshield. I knew taking the car to a regular car wash wouldn't work since Albie tried this last week and the tree sap on his car is still intact. In fact, it may be even more stuck to the car than before.
I started with a regular household cleaner. It worked well on the window, but didn't get much of the gooey stuff off. Next was dishwashing soap and water - while scrubbing with a soft sponge. This got part of the spots on the hood off, but it took too much scrubbing to even make a little difference, so I gave up.
After consulting the wonderful internet, I found out that nail polish remover should work quite well. So, there I was, scrubbing my windshield inch by inch with tiny cotton swabs drenched in nail polish remover... it was quite amazing to see the nasty goo disappear. As I was done and announced to Albie that I finally found something that worked, all he had to say was, "Great! Wanna do my car now?"
The answer, of course, depends on what happens tomorrow. If he is a nice husband, perhaps I will help him out with his car...
Almost a year ago, I wrote a blog post about being addicted to the Facebook game Knighthood. I haven't played that much lately. Nowadays, I am into fake farming.
For those of you who have played Sims, I imagine FarmTown may be a bit familiar. You get a plot of land and then you start planting things. You can plow fields, buy trees, harvest crops and make some money to buy more things for your farm like flowers or a barn.
This, too, is a Facebook game. I got addicted thanks to a friend who visited me after the surgery and told me all about it. "Sounds fun!" I said. "Invite me!"
As most of these games go, they are based on inviting as many of your Facebook friends as possible. The more of your friends who play, the more benefits you get. In FarmTown, for example, your friends are called neighbors, and once you have more than five neighbors you get access to faster plowing tools. If you have 10 neighbors, you can hire someone else to plow for you.
For now, I stick around the Marketplace and wait to get hired. If someone else lets me harvest their raspberries, tomatoes or pumpkins, I will make lots of money and may eventually be able to my myself a pond.
Meanwhile, Albie is busy downstairs playing his new Wii Zelda game that came in the mail yesterday. Ah, the joys of having a day off!
By the end of last week, I was really bored and just wanted to get out of the house. Plus, my friends had a really fun day planned for Saturday, involving a visit to a bridal shop in Fairfield so I could see my friend try on her wedding dress and a visit to Middletown, to see another friend's new house.
Well, we added lunch and bridesmaid's dress shopping. Then we had an evening of pizza, Wii karaoke and board games. On Sunday, the weather was beautiful, so I drove up to Canaan to see another friend. There, I bought some yummies that I later made into dinner and dessert.
By Monday, I was exhausted. I really wanted to see the new Harry Potter movie. A friend and I had scheduled a date for Tuesday, but she asked if I didn't want to see it a day early. Of course I would! So I dragged Albie along to the mall in Milford. But before that, we stopped by his parents' house to see a captured kitten and then went out for sushi.
Needless to say... it was a loooong three days. And I paid for it. By Tuesday, I could barely get out of bed. I stayed in my PJs all day, didn't take a shower, and split my time between Facebook farming and HGTV.
Today was a bit better, although I didn't get out of my PJs until about 5 p.m., when Albie's mom came to take me out to dinner. Now I'm pondering if I'm really ready to go back to work on Tuesday... I think not.
When I got the alert around 8:30 p.m. that former CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite had died, I immediately called my husband to make sure he knew. He was, after all, in a newsroom at Greenwich Time. I was bumming around at home, with no reason to care about such an important event.
"Yeah, I know," was all Albie said. Then he got back to work.
An hour or so later, I got an e-mail from my husband with the subject "That's why you know who he is." It contained parts of an AP story about Cronkite, saying his name is synonymous with the title "anchorman" in many countries. In Sweden, in particular, anchors are known as Kronkiters, the article said.
I've actually never heard that term - at least not as far as I can remember (perhaps I should have paid more attention in Journalism 101). But I do remember the first time I saw Walter Cronkite. It was when I entered the student newspaper office at Westchester Community College.
In the back room of The Bunker, as the office was known, was a conference room taken up by a big rectangular table. Across from the entrance hung a poster-size black-and-white framed-in picture of an old man looking important.
It took a while before I worked up the courage to ask who that man was. It took even longer before I asked what the heck his picture was doing in The Bunker.
To the older students at the paper (at a community college, students of all ages gather), Walter Cronkite was a god. He was a myth and a legend, just as much as he was a credible journalist. His portrait hung on the wall to inspire us, to make us strive to be the best reporters we could be.
Even those of us who didn't know who he was at first knew that we wanted to be like him. Power and authority streamed down at us from that picture. This was an important man. And if we couldn't make a newspaper this man would be proud of, we weren't doing much good hanging around in The Bunker.
After Albie ran off to the store without me today, I got angry. I have been locked up in the house for almost two weeks now, with just one exception - a trip to Walmart on Friday to pick up a prescription. So when he got back from the store, Albie said "would you like to go for a ride?"
Of course, I had tons of questions. Where? ("It's a surprise.") Is it far? ("No.") Will it involve tons of walking? ("No.") Will there be other people there, i.e., should I get changed? ("Probably not.")
A few minutes later, we arrived at... a cemetery. Brilliant.
"Just wait until I tell people about this on my blog," I said, while slowly trying to crawl out of the car.
Turns out it's the oldest cemetery in Naugatuck, dating back to the 1790s. We walked around for a bit and looked at all the graves, thinking up stories of the families that lay beneath. All in all, it was pretty fun, and I got myself some of that fresh air everyone is always raving about.
Albie and I watched a documentary the other day on the History channel called "Inside 9/11." It took us through the events of that horrible day, and I remembered in detail as I heard about the first plane crash on the radio just as I was about to get out of my car at a Quinnipiac University parking lot.
At first, they didn't know what was going on. As I got to my classroom, a few people were already watching CNN. Our journalism teacher said, "let's just watch this today. We'll discuss the coverage later." Then, as a few more people shuffled into the room, we saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center. Then we all watched the towers crumble to the ground.
Perhaps it hit me extra hard because I had been inside Tower 1 less than two weeks before the attack. I had lived less than 30 minutes away. I knew people who worked in the city. I later found out that my host father's friend, Dave Campbell, died there (see another post about him here.)
Then I found out that a friend from my previous school, Westchester Community College, was missing. He had recently taken a job as a firefighter in New York City, near the World Trade Center, and hadn't been seen since the attacks. He eventually showed up at the college - frazzled, distraught and with a new respect for life.
One month ago the trip down to the city would have been regular, and the goal would have been to see the "Top of the World." A few days ago, the trip was filled with rubble, dust, and security guards, and the destination was called Ground Zero.
Already at Grand Central changes had been made. The voice over the speaker did not only encourage passengers to make sure they didn't leave any belongings on the train, but this time also added that any luggage left unattended would be subject to search by police.
The previous day, a firefighter friend had described the smell at Ground Zero as "a mix of smoke and corpses." It did smell worse than in the dirtiest subway station, but it had something else to it as well. Maybe it was the dust that made the whole southern part of Broadway smell burnt, or maybe it was the white smoke still lingering around the top of a white tower south of Wall Street.
People everywhere covered their mouths with cloth or facemasks, especially closer to Wall Street, where a cloud of dust and ashes was still flying around in the air.
Houses as far as seven or eight blocks away from Liberty Plaza and the World Trade Center were still covered in a thick layer of ashes. Cars were abandoned on the streets, shop windows were smashed and stores had shut down. Some restaurant employees were desperately waving signs around showing that in spite of everything, in spite of the street outside being closed off to the public, they were still open.
Every side street to the west of Broadway was guarded heavily by military and police. Signs were posted asking people not to take photos, and guards personally threatened to take away cameras when people from the crowd still took pictures, saying it was an order from the President.
Battery Park had been turned into a military camp. Tourists who would normally have stopped at the bull on Broadway to take photos now stopped and asked to be photographed together with the uniformed soldiers guarding the entrance to the park.
Outside the "100% ID-check zone," workers were flushing every street with water or washing windows and buildings. Everywhere signs of missing people were placed. Flowers, letters and poems had been delivered to the local fire station, Engine 7, where firefighters are still waiting for a sign of their missing friends.
Turning around corner after corner, block after block, there is one sight after another: a totally burned out building turned black by smoke, a pile of rubble, building cranes lifting pieces away from the mess, and from the south, finally, the one arch-like piece of a wall still standing. With the sun slowly rising from behind the wall, it appears as a lit up shadow.
There are no more words to describe what was left at Ground Zero. The meaning of the images came slowly at first, and then it was clear: Everything shown on TV was true. It really did happen.
I’ve always had a hard time understanding American songs, or any song sung in English. When I was a kid, a popular song by Swedish rocker Jerry Williams called “Did I tell you” to me translated into “delateljo,” which in Swedish, of course, doesn’t mean a thing.
I once bought the sheet music to Sarah McLaughlin’s “Angel” because a friend insisted there was a line in there that said “a star called Othello.” I claimed something else – perhaps it was “stark, old bordello,” I can’t remember – but it turned out we were both wrong. McLaughlin was singing about a dark, cold hotel room.
“We’re in America, man,” turned out to be Grand Funk Railroad’s “We’re an American band” and the weird song about a woman’s “Hawaiian eyes” turned out to be “Lyin’ Eyes” by the Eagles (and while googling it, I found out this is a very common misconception).
When I was younger (in Sweden) and people referred to Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” I always thought the song was actually called “I am the tiger.”
My boyfriend, sorry – husband – now listens very carefully to me singing along to the radio in the car to see if he can get a chuckle out of my interpretation of popular songs.
He got the biggest laugh out of me singing along to “mama’s got the squeeze bugs, daddy never sleeps at night.” “The what?” he asked, almost pulling the car over. “The squeezebugs,” I declared. “You know, when people squeeze you really hard. The people who will never stop hugging you.” Albie laughed even harder now. “No, that’s not it. They are singing ‘squeezebox.’” Me: “Well, what the heck is a squeezebox? That doesn’t make any sense.” “It’s an accordion. She’s playing it… in and out… see?” Me, now with arms folded across chest: “I like my lyrics better.” Turns out, of course, that Albie is correct. “Squeezebox” was recorded by The Who in 1975. Apparently, it can also be slang for vagina, and the band at the time was trying to find out what they could get away with in the recording studio.
The other day I was driving home from work and heard a popular song from the 60s that I eagerly sang along to. Then I stopped and said to myself “wait just a minute! Is it supposed to be ‘hang on, stupid, stupid hang on!’ or ‘hang on Snoopy, Snoopy hang on!’?” Again, turns out it was neither. The song by The McCoys released in 1965 actually goes “Hang on Sloopy, Sloopy hang on.” It was written for singer Dorothy Sloop, who used the nickname “Sloopy” on stage.
All I can say now is, thank God for the Internet. Otherwise I would never have known what people are actually singing about.
Inspired by our wedding cake, I made Albie a banana bread cake with vanilla pudding and Nutella filling, topped off with whipped cream. I should have whipped the cream longer, though, so it would have been easier to decorate, but I lost patience with it. The cake is decorated in the style of my grandmother's. (She would just throw tons of fruit on top of any cake she ever made - and there were lots of them, at least one for every special occasion).
After an almost sleepless night spent thinking about all that needs to get done, Albie and I took some time today to talk through our priorities. Do we build a deck or finish the kitchen? Do we put in hardwood floors or buy a new refrigerator?
A few hours ago, I sat down in front of the computer determined to get to the bottom of the greencard application stuff - a higher priority than even floors or a new blender. I'd started looking up some stuff a few months ago, but there were so many forms mentioned and I wasn't in the mood to start looking for them.
Today I started from scratch at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (formerly the INS) web site, where one form directs you to another, that leads you to yet another... until the end of time. But at least all forms are there, with the instructions, in downloadable pieces with clear information about the excessive fees for each one.
After making a list of the I-130, I-864, I-485 (by far the most expensive one), and G-325A, I started reading the instructions for the scariest one of all: the I-693. This is a medical exam, where you are required to submit to an HIV test, a TBC test, and a test for syphilis. But no worries. You will get counseling if it turns out you have any of these diseases (that you have to pay for, of course). Oh, and they'll tell you if you have lepracy as well. Of course, none of these will automatically get you kicked out of the country - you just may have to file a waiver or two in order for your initial application to still be considered.
The tricky part - of course, you thought this would be easy? - is that you can't just go to your primary care physician to have these tests done. Oh no! They have to be completed by a "civil surgeon," a person authorized by USCIS to conduct said tests for this specific purpose. And how many of those are there in my area? None.
The closest one is about 20 minutes away, but there's one about 15 minutes away from my office. But will my health insurance cover these visits and these tests? I guess I'll just tell them to put it on my immigration tab. It'll surely add up anyway between the $80 biometrics fee for fingerprinting and the $70 bonus for the Department of State for the processing of the required affidavit of support. And those are the small fees.
Have I lost any readers yet? I'm surely lost somewhere in a pile of papers, wandering around aimlessly wondering which way is up and where to go next. Almost. Maybe. Well, we'll find out.
Fifteen thank-you cards and 105 photo printouts after our wedding, I think I may be ready to tell my story.
As I've said before, I became pretty impatient with people when they were trying to tell me what to do during the wedding planning. Some even called me "Bridezilla." This lasted up until a few minutes before the actual ceremony last Sunday in Vermont.
Not only did the groom, Albie, decide it was a good idea to try to persuade me to walk down some narrow stairs for my entrance when I had specifically said this would never happen because I would trip and fall, but some relatives proceeded to tell me that 3:30 p.m. was "just too early" to have dinner. One of my bridesmaids then insisted on there being dancing during the "reception," which I had requested not to do.
What is wrong with people? is all I kept thinking. This is MY special day, and nobody is LISTENING to me!!!
In the end, it all worked out fabulously. Despite the bridesmaid boquets of lilies never opening up, the best man driving halfway to Canada before finding the right way, and people trying to force me to put my dress on 40 minutes before the ceremony started, everything went smoothly and we all had a blast.
I did, in fact, enjoy being able to boss people around, so perhaps it was good they couldn't follow direction...
Right before the ceremony, my bridesmaids crammed into this room we had turned into a "catch-all" to watch me zip up my dress. In this mess, my photographer managed to take some of the most beautiful pictures prior to the wedding.
When the last car finally pulled up to the house (I could see the driveway through my window) - 15 minutes after we were scheduled to begin - one of my bridesmaids was sent out to tell everyone to PLEASE take their seats as soon as possible. She was very good about it, too.
"We are dealing with a very impatient Swedish bride, so if everyone would just take their seats right now, that would be great!" she said.
It wasn't long after that we all rushed out of there to the tunes of Bach's "Air on the G-string." And I mean rushed. You'll know what I'm talking about if you see the video (posted in six parts in previous posts).
The ceremony went quicker than I had ever dared anticipate. It was about 12 minutes, and that included blessings of the rings, the vows, a reading and several prayers. I'm starting to like the Episcopalean church's way of doing things. (Of course, several things had been cut out during the early stages of planning...)
As I was standing in front of the fireplace, with Judy (the minister) up on the actual fireplace on my left and everyone staring at me from the right, I found out what a good idea it had been to suggest early on that Albie and I take each other's hands for most part of service. It was much easier to concentrate that way, and also much easier to stand up and not worry about passing out.
I wasn't exactly nervous, but it was a bit stomach-turning to think about what we were about to do - right now, as everyone is looking. I am glad there were only 20 other people in the room.
Of course, our minister had picked up the wrong pair of eyeglasses, so she had to do the whole thing from memory. She apparently couldn't see a thing from her program. It didn't become evident to me until the very end, where I mistakenly thought she was getting emotional about her nephew and therefore messed up some of the words.
During the dinner, my favorite part was that the favor bags of m&ms were immediately opened up and people started flining them across the room. I think Albie's uncle was the one who started it, and I threw several in all directions that didn't hit anyone. Albie's dad, however, managed to hit two people with one shot as he threw a candy at his uncle, missed and hit the best man in the head. It then bounced off the best man's head and hit Albie's cousin in the boob.
Cleaning up the chocolates the following day, all I could think was "it was definitely worth it."
When it was time to cut the cake, my grandmother called from Sweden and I had everyone yell out to her. Then Albie's mom got on the phone with her for about 15 minutes, and they must have said some great stuff in some joint langauge because they were both crying at the conclusion of their talk.
Then we couldn't find Albie. The best man had stolen him away and they were sitting in his car listening to music. We finally cut the cake though, and everyone enjoyed it just as much as Albie and I did when my friend Kristen first brough over a test cake to our house. It looked amazing too (more pictures to follow another day).
Albie passed out at 9 p.m. and I spent a few hours having champagne, crackers and cheese with my friends before they all went to bed too. Then I started cleaning and organizing some stuff, and I didn't go to sleep until 2 a.m. (still earlier than my normal bed time).
The following day, we all headed down to the inn where Albie's parents were staying, only to be greated by a very cheery chef who had made up a special treat: Eggs Altoria, named after us. It was basically bruschetta with a scrambled egg base, and it was really good. Of course, Albie was so hung over he couldn't eat more than a few bites. Then he slept through the rest of the day.
All in all, though, it was a very successful affair. Now we're married, and we'll have lots more stories to tell.
