Today wasn’t anything out of the ordinary as it involved
many little jobs around the house and lots of visits with family, so all-in-all
it was a good day, but it went by far too quickly.
Daniel spent the night with Kaleb so they were fairly
engrossed in electronics all day. I had
to kick them out of the house when the sun peaked through the clouds so they
wandered around the mall and went over to the skate park to watch kids
skate. Later in the day I offered to pay
them to pick wild blueberries, as they needed more incentive to break free from
their electronic addictions. I got half
a pound of blueberries out of the deal, anyway.
Tante Kari came up this morning for a visit just after I
told Kory we needed to stop in and see her today, since it’s been several days
since we’ve chatted. She’s always so
chipper and fun to hang with, so our visits are never long enough.
After Kari left, we decided to go visit Tante Ruth at the
old folk’s home as we hadn’t seen her at all since we’ve been here this
year. She assured me last year she’d be
in heaven by the time we returned to Norway, but I do think she’ll live longer
than Kari. Ruth was looking better than
ever. She’s put on a few pounds, which she
needed, and she got a new hearing aid so she’s able to hear much better. It’s so nice not to have to yell at her all
the time, but sadly, she’s still blind.
She sang us an old Christian Norwegian hymn and she asked us
to sing her a song too, so we sang a modern Norwegian song we sing at church
that she’d never heard. She was thrilled
we remembered she liked Aplets and Cotlets and brought her a few boxes of them,
so she gobbled down a few pieces while we were there. She’ll be 89 in October and feels lucky to be
alive.
Ruth likes to say, “Imagine that – you have the time to come
visit an old lady like me!” She asked
about “God’s leilighet” (condo) as Kory often tells people that God has a condo
in Norway with our name on it. Kory gave
her a short version of the long list of things we are doing to it this year
when we are here.
Not far from Ruth’s place is an antique store that sells
things for far too much money, but the things I love the most, they sell dirt
cheap, so I had to stop in for a quick visit.
I like the Norwegian metal trays for serving cookies, holding candles or
plants or whatever and today was my lucky day because they were half off so I
got a lot of them for about 35 cents each.
It’s not possible to buy a single piece of candy in Norway for 35 cents
so I went home whistling Dixie over that one.
I also got a cool pewter Viking ship that looks stellar on my bookshelf,
but I had to splurge on that one and spend ten bucks. I just couldn’t pass it up.
When I was telling one cousin about my love for these old
Norwegian items she just shook her head and said, “I just throw that stuff
out. I figure if I don’t want it
anymore, no one else will and I think many others think the same way.” I’m sure the dumps all over Norway hold more
treasures than any antique store could manage.
So sad.
Both Kory and I made big blunders today with no one to blame
but our foggy old brains. I’ve been
waiting all summer to make reservations for a mission trip a group from our
church will be taking next August. I’m
the organizer of the trip, but my organization skills were sorely lacking today
when I calculated the time difference in the wrong direction. The orphanage takes reservations on the first
of the month, one year before the trip is to happen. They time stamp all the requests so it’s first
come, first serve. I’ve had the email
ready and was sitting by the computer watching the clock intently for midnight
on August 1st to hit Pacific Standard Time… but it turns out I was
six hours too late! For whatever whacko
reason I thought it would be 3 in the afternoon here, when it was midnight
there, and I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I should have sent the email at 9am, instead. Ugh! I
can only pray that our request got in soon enough to get at least one of the
weeks for next August, but I was kicking myself the rest of the day over it.
We were invited over to Odd and Turid’s for dinner tonight. They are our anchor here in Norway as in
year’s past we’ve always stayed with them for weeks on end so we feel most at
home at their place. Turid told me initially to come at six o’clock, but called
later and told Kory to come at 4:30. The
problem with talking about the time in Norwegian is that Norwegian use the
words “half five” when they mean 4:30, since it’s half way to five o’clock, but
if a person isn’t thinking straight, it’s easy to think of it as 5:30, and
that’s what Kory did. So he had his own
mix-up on the time today, too.
The boys were up in the woods picking blueberries when Turid
called at ten til five wondering where we were.
We had to call the boys and tell them to run home, then drive Daniel
home and head on over to Odd’s house, and we were still 45 minutes late and the
food was getting cold. Oops. Dinner was still good and Kory got to eat
fish one more time this week. It’s a
good thing we climbed a mountain yesterday.
Turid boiled the halibut and other veggies and I brought
another fat-free pineapple cake, which surprised them by how good it was. They both took the smallest little piece at
first, since it sounds so unappealing. Odd couldn’t understand how anyone could
make a cake without butter in it, but they both ate seconds and thirds as the
night went on. We put the fresh
blueberries on top and we had vanilla sauce at the ready and I think we all ate
more dessert than dinner.
It’s so nice people are trying to accommodate Kory’s diet,
as I know how hard it is to cook with no fat.
Friends are asking friends behind our back “What can we cook for Kory?”
as people want to have us over but are clueless as to what to make. Dr. Odd is
not at all in favor of this diet, so he was pleased to see Kory eating some
halibut. At home, Kory doesn’t “cheat”
at all, but he knows it’s impossible when we are invited somewhere. But even Odd was impressed when Kory told him
he climbed Sula yesterday and never got any angina, except for a brief moment
right after we’d eaten lunch and were hiking uphill. Of course, we were going at my pace the whole
way, but still, to think he can climb mountains without the threat of a heart
attack was very comforting to Odd. Odd
said he will NEVER climb a mountain with Kory though, because he would be too
afraid. Odd’s younger sister died in his
arms of a heart condition, so he doesn’t want that happening again.
We had a wonderful visit with Odd and Turid, as usual –
sitting out on their deck wrapped in wool blankets and drinking a little
wine watching the day come to a close. The only bad part was when Odd
told us he doesn’t think his mom (Tante Kari) will live more than a year since
she’s having to have more and more transfusions and her blood keeps getting
thicker with each one. Her cancer is
something like leukemia where her spine doesn’t produce red blood cells
anymore. It’s hard to think of being in
Norway without her, so we’ll just have to cross that bridge when it gets here.
I guess we all can’t live forever, but at last I’m trying to keep us all
healthy until that day comes.
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