Maybe I was dressed up as a grown-up, did they ever think of that?

Since my birthday is two days after Halloween I traditionally have weeks of candy/cake/chocolate gifts to enjoy. This has been less the case this year as Little Girl mostly did not get sweets while trick-or-treating but boring shit like pretzels and popcorn balls and little plastic toys. Obviously this was great for her, but since, in addition, she also has a much lower tolerance for trick-or-treating than I do, and was ready to pack it in after no more than a dozen houses, there really has been no candy extravaganza, especially as we didn’t stock ourselves for trick-or-treaters at all, rightly expecting none (which is why we got in the car and traveled to the only child-infested neighborhood on the island for Halloween).

Wow, I don’t know what happened with that sentence, but it is really long. To summarize, it’s my birthday Monday, and Halloween was meager (but fun). They’re starting to do Halloween a bit in Sweden so I didn’t have another this-is-the-last-time-I’ll-ever-do-this-again freakout.

I dressed up, too, as always, and carried the extra treat bag a neighbor had given Little Girl. But nobody mistook me for a kid. One person even asked me, “Are you collecting for another child?” And then at lunch today the waitress, upon learning it was my birthday celebration, asked me, laughing, “Are you twenty-two today?” Why is that a joke? I mean, I could be twenty-two, right? How would she know? Hell, I could even be a teenager, for that matter! Maybe I was trick-or-treating!

Uh, I guess I’m having some birthday issues. But Halloween was good, even though it was pretty weird to be sweating while trick-or-treating. It was so warm that day we swam in the ocean. Ah, island living.

Bonus points if you can guess what Little Girl was. She nodded affirmatively to everyone’s guesses yesterday but nobody got it quite right. Probably because it’s not an actual thing. Cute, though. (She’d also nod affirmatively anytime anyone told her that, too. Which was even cuter.)

Why even get a wallet if there’s no money left to put in it?

My wallet’s falling apart. I wanted to get a new one. But wait–Swedish crown bills are a different size–I should just wait until we move.

I guess I’ll just add that to the increasingly-distressing list of Shit We Gotta Buy All Over Again In Sweden. I don’t understand how we are shipping a 20 ft. container and it doesn’t include any of these items. What the hell are we sending, then? The only stuff I remember for sure are fancy china we never use, pillows, and Christmas decorations.

I hate cold.

Six days ago we were swimming in the ocean and making sand castles in our bathing suits under a nice, warm sun. I don’t know what the hell happened but it’s totally freezing now. Hot weather doesn’t bother me at all–100 degrees? Great! No need to wear clothes!–but anything under 70 is unacceptable and we are already 20 degrees below that and I am unbearably cold. (Sweden, here I come!)

I’m pretty mopey about it. It feels not just like the end of this summer, but the end of any kind of summer for the rest of my life (don’t make fun of my melodrama). Even in July in Sweden you might need a jacket. Normally I like fall–my birthday, scarves, the candy, corduroys–but since the weather in Sweden is, in some ways, perpetually fall, at least Georgia-style, I’m not interested in experiencing it in advance. As though I had a choice. I’m pretty, disproportionately, I suppose, upset about the turn in the weather.

But I reluctantly put up the Halloween decorations and we carved a pumpkin and ate the seeds and that was nice so I guess I’m finally giving in and accepting that summer is gone and I’ll just have to be cold forever. There’s still fun stuff to do, I guess. Like washed-up logs to jump over and dead baby sharks–with teeth!–to poke at with sticks. It’s not all bad. Sigh. Sucks though. Least it’s not snowing, like it is in Sweden already.

New little cousins and how they grow

So my sister-in-law’s baby, S, is two months old now, and I keep getting emails about her development from her proud pappa. There’s a kind of hilarious element of competitiveness with them. Like: “S weighed 14.55 pounds and she was 24 inches tall at her 2-month visit. Exact same numbers as [other cousin A] when he was 3 months. How big was [Little Girl] at that age?” (I went ahead and emailed him her growth chart from birth to age two for his convenience.)

I’m happy she’s doing well. I imagine it’ll be fun to watch her grow, once we finally get to Sweden and meet her, and I’m sure Little Girl will enjoy it. My brother-in-law and his wife asked us to be S’s godparents, which of course is very sweet of them. I just wish I knew what that entailed in Swedish society. From what I gather it’s pretty informal, but there is her baptism coming up in November that we’ll have to miss. Too bad: I’d like to see a Croatian-style baptism done in Swedish. (S’s mom is a first-generation Swede. My other brother-in-law is Serbian. My mother-in-law is Finnish. It’s a very international family.)

For the move I divested myself of most of Little Girl’s multitude of outgrown clothes, and kept only one bin of items too precious (too cute, too imbued with memory, too fancy) to part with, for in case I ever have another girl. But then it seemed silly for them to be sitting neglected when S could use them, so I asked them if they’d like the hand-me-downs. And they said no! They only want S in the new clothes they buy or are given! Apparently they also turned down clothes from S’s cousins on her other side, who are all girls. Goofy. But then these are the people with the nine-hundred dollar pram. I knew enough of my sister-in-law’s personality to ask first and not assume they’d want the clothes. What’s kind of funny to me, on reflection, is that several of the items in that bin were themselves originally hand-me-downs.

Little Girl absolutely thrives having lots of family around. Nothing stimulates and delights her so much. It’s definitely the big plus of Sweden. At least for her. Growing up the only children of only children of only children, for me the benefits are largely theoretical at this point. Do you like a lot of family around?

Troublesome

It makes sense, of course. We’ve had a hard year. Husband’s had lots of work worries; I got pregnant to mixed feelings; we realized we had to move out of our neighborhood, newly plagued by crime; I had a lengthy, expensive, painful miscarriage; we sold/gave away many of our belongings and had the rest packed away; we moved; we sold our house and lost a shitload of money; we’re in limbo until the next move; Husband is gone more than half the time for work.

So I’m not surprised that Husband and I are, let’s say, less than delighted with each other these days. We’re having a hard time getting along, being friends, liking each other. Usually my prescription for this kind of situation is more sex, but like I said, he’s gone a lot, and the master bed here in the beach house has this weird bed frame where the headboard is a shelf with all these knick knacks on it and, well, it just makes things ungodly loud. Plus I am all freaked out about getting pregnant again which is also an enthusiasm-damper.

I’m sure any couple in this situation would be testy. I hope once we’re settled in Sweden–and perhaps after his parents, with whom we’ll be living for a while, move out–we’ll get back into some normal relationship mode, that’s not only switched on the four days of the week, max, we see each other. We’ll feel like a team instead of the combatants we sometimes find ourselves these days. And it’s not all bad, now. Today we’re buddies.

It’s just that sometimes, horrifyingly, I’m content to see him leave, and I don’t miss him when he’s gone.

Of course I called him in the end

I received some important mail today. My passport came back from the Swedish embassy and in it is a VERY fancy sticker, all in Swedish. I had no idea what it said so I googled some of the bigger words and…it looks like my Swedish residency permit, a permanent one, has arrived! This is really fast, people. It’s supposed to take half a year to ten months, and it took just two.

I’m not gonna lie: I thought about, uh, not mentioning it to Husband right away. Because now it’s here, we have no major obstacles to moving.

Sure, there are the unbelievably complicated requirements for our pets to complete, rules I’ve studied for hours and still don’t quite understand, though I have determined that we need to take our pets to a special vet, three hours away, for a special microchipping, and then have special bloodwork samples sent to a special lab in Kansas, and that’s only the beginning. And Husband is having trouble finding jobs to apply to, not so much because they’re in short supply, but because all the ones in his field require lots of travel, something we’d all rather he’d avoid, having had our fill of it: it’s not good for Little Girl and it’s not good for our relationship. (And excuse me if I don’t feel like moving to a foreign country where I don’t speak the language and then having Husband traipse freely around Europe and I have to figure everything out all by myself). And we were hoping to go after the bathroom renovations were finished there, and to arrive not too long before our stuff, which will take six weeks to ship.

But basically the move could, potentially, be only a matter of weeks away. We won’t do it that soon–for one thing, I have a teaching contract through very early December to complete–but it’ll probably be earlier than I’d imagined, and during the middle of winter. As with selling the house, though I’d purposefully and mindfully set all this in motion, the reality of it is freaking me out a bit. I’m moving to Sweden, you guys! Ack!

Chatty

Normally as soon as I put down the book and turn out the light I go to sleep, but lately I’ve had some miserable insomnia. Or it could be trouble returning to this time zone; when I talked about this with my dad, he told me, “That gets harder the older you get.”

I seem to be getting a lot of these sorts of comments lately, by the way, about my rapidly advancing age. Some lady at the airport even assumed my dad, a good thirty-five years my senior, was my husband. I mean, I know I have that one wrinkle on my forehead, but really. Of course I also recently realized that those cute natural blonde highlights at my temples? Are not blonde at all.

Now my daddy’s special lady friend is about to turn fifty, though she looks half that. All those vegetables and all that yoga–she does it five times a week. She’s an interesting one. I’ve mentioned before I feel a bit sad for her, having, in my opinion poorly, chosen to be with my dad rather than to have children, since he hasn’t wanted more (the only child in me says, “And why would he, when I’m totally fulfillingly awesome?”). But she’s really done a great lot of very interesting things–fellowships in Switzerland, yoga weeks in LA, all manner of degrees in languages and arts and literature, and she’s just written a novel–that would have been hard to do if she’d had kids. She dotes on her cat, a creature we only saw the tail end of once the whole week we were there. It’s a timid one. Honestly for a while there I suspected perhaps the cat was fictional.

Speaking of cats, our Pudding has stopped crying in the night so much since her brother’s death, but has, instead, become insanely, incessantly talkative. About 85% of the time I’m sure she’s just reminding us of the existence of canned tuna, and informing us of her interest in eating some (or really in sniffing at it, maybe taking one or two bites, then stalking off), but she’s probably also still lonely and maybe confused (Pudding never was the bright one–I ever tell you about the time she had some, uh, pooping situation, and every time an, uh, attack would come on, she’d be newly, wholly surprised at the events happening in her nether regions, and run off, as if pursued?). She’s started sleeping with me at nights, something that used to be Tang’s department.

Which reminds me–the insomnia. So I’m up hours into the night worrying about the move to Sweden, or the renovations in Sweden (which are NOT proceeding apace; the government’s 50% off home improvements deal has, as you’d suspect, been quite popular, and it’s impossible to get anybody out to the house to actually do anything), and then giving up and reading, and having a snack, then fretting some more, finally sleeping fitfully, constantly plagued by squeaky fan sounds or electric lights, only to have to get up just a few hours later, and spend the succeeding day with a nearly migraine-level headache.

And while we’re talking about my physical ailments let me inform you I’ve mostly cured my toe arthritis pain issue–via painkillers, so I guess technically that’s not a cure–but there are still only a few pairs of shoes I can wear without pain, except that I’ve worn them so much now they’re wearing out, and replacements I’ve tried of the same brands don’t stave off the pain in quite the same way. Maybe only really worn-in shoes help? It’s quite a problem.

Wait, how many words has this been about my arthritis? Maybe there’s something to all the comments about my age I’ve been getting. I do have a birthday coming up. I plan to get new bedding, though what we really need here is new dishwasher since the current one is just ancient and has to be practically bribed and fondled to get it to wash anything even half-way.

Since last we spoke

Hey! We’ve been busy. Sometimes when you leave it too long so much happens and then it feels impossible to parse it all. I’m sure you know what I mean. Here are the salient details:

The trip back to where we just moved from was mostly successful. The resort relaxing, the friends entertaining. We did not close on the house, however. Somebody screwed up the paperwork. But we signed power of attorney over to the realtor on this matter so when it’s ready to close–by the end of August if people can find time to do their jobs–we won’t have to go back, since it’s a long trip and anyway Husband is in Belgium until Labor Day.

The Swedish Embassy is moving extremely quickly with my application for residency. They contacted us with two questions: Where will we live? What will Husband do for work? (I have to say I am peeved that no one seemed interested in my career plans.) We were also told that an interview would be unlikely, given the length of our marriage. Husband of course finds this rapidity to be a relief; for my part, as the move gets more and more imminent, I feel a mixture of regret about leaving the US and excitement about the new adventure.

Our dogs were very, very bad for our pet sitter, the fourteen-year-old girl across the street whom I’d engaged to walk them when we were gone. They escaped from the kitchen one night, ate the litter box, became ill, and shat in various rooms of the house on fine needlepoint throw rugs. They even managed to stain the hardwood floors. And while we were gone my mother decided to come to town–thank goodness we’d cleaned the house and done the yard before leaving town–and she and the handyman, who was around trying to fix the roof leak, couldn’t get the dogs to stay penned up either as there was a thunderstorm and apparently there was this chaotic scene where the dogs kept eluding them, escaping out either end of the galley kitchen, vomiting intermittently. Goodness.

Pudding has been mourning her dead brother. In the middle of the night, she cries and yowls in the dark living room. I go pick her up and bring her to bed with us and pet her until she relaxes enough to rest. It’s beyond sad. She’s been talking a lot in general, partly because, as I’d promised Tang on his deathbed I’d give Pudding salmon, she’s now quite keen to have wet food every evening, and also because she’s always been a talker, and now she has serious questions for me.

Now that summer’s almost done, about which I am rather broken up, I finally learned that we could have been using the three community pools around here all this time. The jellyfish are out now and I looked into getting a pool pass for a few weeks when I discovered that was unnecessary. So now we get to do truly awesome things like play in a large, nearly empty pool with old oaks overhanging, listening to restaurants’ live music, where Little Girl swims like an otter (she can really move underwater; the only thing she can’t do is not drown, i.e. come back up to breathe, so usually I have her in a vest), and then we can hop in the car or on the bike and go to the ocean for a romp in the waves.

Oh, and Little Girl turned three!

A mobile society

When moving, I was particularly sad about leaving our friends. But they’re making it easy on me: I guess I started a trend or something, because two of my best and oldest friends in the area are now both moving away themselves. To Ohio, coincidentally. It makes me feel better about going away and not seeing them anymore since now I wouldn’t be seeing them anyway.

In related news, I have realized that I also know two people who live in Qatar of all places. That’s kinda weird, isn’t it? One from college, one from grad school.

My Swedish relatives like to comment on how Americans move around so much. They think it’s rather remarkable, and are faintly disapproving. But I believe there are two kinds of Swedish people: the kind that stay in their hometown forever and never even visit abroad, and the kind you meet in hostels all over the planet. Most Americans seem to fall in the middle. We’re more like serial monogamists when it come to geography.

What about you? Where are some exotic places people you know have gotten off to? And you?

My new niece

Recently Husband’s little brother’s teeny tiny wife gave birth, one week late, to a perfect baby girl, Saga, who weighed nearly ten pounds. Laughing gas and a vacuum extractor were involved which I think is pretty typical from Sweden (at least it’s been the story with both sisters-in-law so far). She looks just like her father except she’s got her mother’s distinctive nose. She likes to sleep and eat. You know, the normal stuff. Living in Sweden as they do, her parents have literally years of maternity and paternity leave to divvy up and take like they will from their typically Swedish jobs at a state-run daycare and Ericsson. They’ve just bought their first home and move in next month, and have scrapped their crazy plans to renovate the kitchen immediately, what with the tiny human they have now.

Although I was obviously aware a baby was on the way, when she was finally born, the sadness totally surprised me. I mean, I was supposed to be having a baby, too. Part of the reason I had wanted to get pregnant last winter was, semi-consciously, because V was. She’s always said she wanted to time her first baby with my second, a sort of shimmery, pretty idea that proved too perfect for real life. First she miscarried, then I did. But now we both have little girls. And after my initial reaction, I’m very happy for her, for the whole family, that this new little person we’ll get to watch grow (and whom I do not have to wake up with in the night!) is here. She and Little Girl have visited over the webam several times already, and as Saga snuffles in her sleep, couched in her father’s arms, my girl likes to sing her melodies that eventually all turn into “Twinkle twinkle little star.”

Road trip

It’s a three-hour trip between to my mom’s along back roads in rural South Carolina and Georgia. Tumble-down shacks, house fires that leave only lonesome fireplaces, cars brown with age. But also high corn fields, so much sky you can see a rainstorm miles away but where you are it’s all yellow, tiny white churches, dense pine forests, long enticing driveways to abandoned plantation homes. I love it.

When I was eight, my dad and I drove from North Carolina to Alaska. It took weeks, and a lot of the time I was sprawled in the hatchback with My Little Ponies flying against the backdrop of the rear windshield. I remember North Dakota as a chant: “rocks and trees, rocks and trees.” For several days we were stuck in little Fort Nelson, British Columbia, due to an avalanche, where we scored the very last hotel room in town and discovered the humongous pool complex the place had rewarded itself. It was the first time I’d been in a sauna. We lingered in Chicago, we ate biscuits and gravy in Indiana, we posed with totem poles in Alberta. We mostly camped.

When I was 15, we enjoyed another epic road trip through the southwest. I remember sleeping in the desert on top of the car, freaked out about snakes, lightning on faraway mountaintops; prostitutes’ graphic fliers in Las Vegas; the haze of the Grand Canyon; the jet skis on Lake Tahoe.

Recently, I wondered if you could drive from Sweden to Africa. Just curious. For all practical purposes you can’t, and you definitely shouldn’t, but it’s only 1 day, 9 hours according to Google maps to Cadiz. That’s nothing! Our diagonal trip across North America was pegged at 3 days, 1 hour of straight driving. Shit, you guys, when we move, I can drive to Spain! And it’s only 16 hours, 41 minutes to London! Rome: 21 hours, 34 minutes. Oslo: 3 hours, 53 minutes (closer to us than Stockholm in fact). Paris: 15 hours, 24 minutes. Istanbul: 1 day, 21 hours. If I were crazy enough, I could drive to motherfucking China! Awesome! I mean, obviously we would fly or take the train generally, but my brother-in-law recently drove to Croatia (20 hours, 19 minutes). It can be done. Sometimes people go the slow way.

Just imagine the sights.

Informed fear

My worries about living in Sweden fall into two main categories: personal happiness pitfalls and grocery availability. In regards to the latter, they don’t even have coffee ice cream for chrissakes. What kind of a society is that? It doesn’t even make sense–they love coffee!

But fine, I’ll get an ice cream maker. However Sweden, unavoidably, is notable for various other factors that I know from personal experience are problematic for me: darkness, loneliness, and uncertainty. The darkness is obvious enough. I mean, the Arctic Circle swings through the country. For a large part of the year the sun never even really comes up. That’s some serious darkness. I fell into a serious depression just by living in a ground floor dorm room–I need light!

And loneliness. Sure there’s family, but I need friends. Specifically, I need mommy friends. But Sweden has one of the lowest birth rates in the world; I’ll be living in a teeny tiny village; what mommies are to be found probably already have friends, and Swedes are notorious for sticking to their early childhood buddies.

Plus, and this ties into the third problem, I don’t really speak Swedish. I may never, though I will try. Some people might feel like breaking out their high school foreign language knowledge with me, but, really, would you? It’s only sensible to try to operate in Swedish as much as I can, but that means coming off kinda stupid, or childlike, and enduring every linguistic interaction as a stressful, embarrassing challenge rife with opportunity for confusion and mistake. I certainly won’t be able to evince my real personality and thoughts, at least for a few years, as fully as I can in English. And I like my personality and thoughts.

And I’m not even mentioning how I have to go to two-three more years of school there just to be able to continue my career. When I feel like marinating in these worries, there are several websites for Americans in Sweden where people like to share their Swedish miseries. Below the cut are selected quotes that especially freaked me out. Sure, there are at least partial solutions to all these problems, and the best defense is a good offense, which I intend to attempt, but I do worry. With reason.