Corona virus Pennsylvania style

As is the case for a lot of earthlings these days our daily routines are beginning to get impacted by the corona virus. Schools have been open this week (after a thorough deep-clean over the weekend) but I highly doubt they’ll be open tomorrow. We’ll see. The neighboring county has made a complete shutdown and closed all schools, public buildings, and non-essential shops and I doubt we will follow far behind. I drove by Trader Joe’s on the way home and they were pretty much out of eggs, meat, and frozen vegetable (didn’t even bother to look for toiletpaper......).

Technically I should have been on the way to Atlanta to spend the weekend with my favorite Ann Arborite -Tammy🥺. We spent most of yesterday texting about whether we should go or not until we got notice that Atlanta was starting to close down too. And as much as I had looked forward to getting down there, it was not appealing to hang out in a closing city without knowing whether it would even be possible to make it back. We kind of decided on this in the middle of the night. Equally sleep deprived and stressed out. Unfortunately things got cancelled so late that there are not really any refunds to be had except 30% of the Airbnb cost, but so be it.

Ulrik is still in Michigan. They have closed all in-person classes but the campus as such is still open. Right now we are waiting it out to see if he should come home and whether that would be Ulrik all his stuff (going by car) or just Ulrik a suitcase (on a plane). It will depend on whether they will be required on campus for exams etc.

So for now we are waiting. And washing our hands. And disinfecting our phones every time we come home. And in the middle of all this I keep reminding myself that we are doing quite well, and that maybe - again from a global perspective - it is not a bad thing that we all get to take a break from flying and buying just to give the climate a little breather.

Last but not least: check out this bird poop!!!! Wow! This serves as a good reminder NOT to look up when geese are migrating

Surgery and corona virus

It’s a lovely Friday in March, that I spend here on the couch slightly woozy from Ben & Jerry’s icecream and some morphine ✌🏻 Both are equally necessary to recover from having metal screws whacked deep into my jaw bones. Here in the US stuff like that gets done under full anesthesia which I really don’t mind. Especially not when the fantastic Afro-American-no-fuss female surgeon insists on playing gospel music in the room, ask my to “scoot my bootie” a little lower in the seat and calls the oxygenation cable “Queen B”. “Queen B” canNOT be crossed by any other cable in there.Period! I prefer her to any of the other entitled male oral surgeons I have had the - ehm - pleasure of dealing with previously.

Luca has also been home today too due to corona virus related school closing. Most likely the first of many. A couple of people (kids or adult - that’s not specified) have been close to confirmed corona virus victims in another state and as a precaution they are scrubbing down the schools today. I have very mixed feelings about this. I understand the worry, but I honestly don’t think this virus can be contained, and if this is the strategy I guess they will technically have to cancel schools until the summer break begins. This will not affect us too much as the kids are teens and as Kristian works from home several days per week. But what about those families that are not this lucky?

Over and out from a couch in Pennsylvania:

Spring break and summer plans

This week is spring break at university of Michigan. Since the semester ends around the time May starts, the break always happens early and we have made sure that Ulrik could come and visit for some of the week at least. He arrived Saturday morning. Looked a bit tired. Went to take a nap and woke up....... 19!!!!! hours later!!!!!!! How is that even possible? At least he looks somewhat more well rested today (duh) which was good since Luca made sure to keep him on his toes (and I know this may look like Luca beating his brother in pushups, but I can assure all of you, that he got his a.. kicked by his older brother)

It has also been a good time to discuss the summer as there are many plans on many different levels to fit in. Let’s start with the youngest member of the family. At his confirmation last spring my sister gave hm a trip to visit her in Copenhagen, and since he is going we have made sure that he can stay as long as absolute possible and get to hang out with family and even go to a camp, while in Denmark. He is a bit nervous about it as he doesn’t really remember that much but I think he will have a blast!

Then there is Teresa. Who will graduate high school this spring. She has decided to move back to Denmark and will start at HK gym (small private Christian high school) to take 3.G. there (final year of danish high school). This will give her a chance to get settled as well as make sure she can pass the danish study test. A requirement for kids with foreign educations who wish to study at the university to get a non-international degree. She will stay with good friends of ours and is rather looking forward to the whole thing. Prior to this I had promised her a big trip. Just like Ulrik and Kristian went to Tokyo, Teresa and I had plans to go somewhere exotic. We talked about Australia..... well.... 🔥 then we talked about Korea..... well.... 😷. And now we kind of wait it out a bit to see where things are in a few months (I won’t start ranting in this blog post how much the state of the world terrifies me these days).

Ulrik also has quite the summer ahead of him. His program requires him to have a study abroad period, so he will go to Nepal. Remote Nepal. And help make ceramic water filters for families who will otherwise not have access to clean water. He is already taking weekly classes to prepare him for a longer stay in a country where “cows have more rights than women” - as he frankly puts it. This will only be a 3 week program and there are 4months of break before the third year in college starts. And we have talked a bit about having him go to Denmark and visit Bornholm to start to build network in the ceramic circles there which may hopefully result in some sort of internship’ish stay in the summer of 2021.

Kristian and I will of course stay back in PA and make sure to work and make money to pay for the kids’ adventures. Sigh.

A busy Presidents’ Day weekend

This weekend has been one of the long 3 days one due to Presidents’ Day. For all of us! When we lived in Michigan it was only few holidays where we all had time off at the same time, but here it seems to match up a little better. And we have been busy!

Friday night (which also happened to be Valentine’s Day) one of my foodist colleagues had arranged for a king crab dinner at a Chinese restaurant. The kind of restaurant where jelly fish heads, duck tongues, and intestines are also to be found on the menu. But we opted for the nice dishes and it was delicious!

Several of the dishes were cooked from this lovely fella:

I opted out of crab but still got to stuff myself with Peking duck. Yum!

Saturday we cleaned. And then cleaned some more. The landlord has requested a 6 months walk through to make sure there he is up to date on necessary repairs etc. This has been a very good opportunity for us to get rid off the stuff that got relocated here but which we NEVER ever want to pull out of a moving box ever again (when someone else packs your boxes nothing really gets sorted and we also had a couple of IKEA dressers that didn’t handle a move very well as they were moved with all the drawers being full). Such as perhaps cutting down on how many shoes to keep in one closet:

We did have a break on Saturday night though where we went to see Parasite (also with colleagues of mine). Wow! Have you seen it? You get a very different perspective on basements and housekeepers for sure......

Sunday we went to Philly. Kristian and Luca went to the car show with our neighbor:

Whereas Teresa and I went to look at some stores rather then cars. We also had lunch at Hip city veg. A vegan fast food place that has super delicious fries, burgers, lemonade etc. and which is very conveniently located right next to anthropology. Where I bought at full price item! An owl pot holder! Yay. Or whatever.

Today we cleaned some more and now our shoes look like this, which is a rather big improvement:

Bailey and I also had a long walk in peace valley park with yet another one of my colleagues followed by sushi (bailey didn’t get to go for the latter)

So all in all it feels great to end the weekend in a crisp tidied up house after 3 days with lots of seeing other people too.

Paintball do’s and dont’s

I tried something new today: paintball. Or should we call it pain-ball......? It was a few weeks in the making as the first attempt to go out and “play” was kind of screwed up by our hill looking like this:

I was super disappointed. Especially upon having received this encouraging text prior to going:

So today we tried again. And I certainly learned a LOT! Primarily about what not to do😳

So here it goes:- do wear appropriate foot wear. Especially when the ground looks like this

- don’t wear brightly colored clothes as you will feel super stupid and like a way-too-easy target should you go wearing bright pink or red. Ahem

- do make sure to look at the ground in front of your next hiding spot. If it’s ankle deep mud maybe you should find another spot....😬

- do not get intimidated the slightest by the local Pennsylvanian Rambo-snipers pulling up in their pick up trucks wearing full camouflage outfits with GoPro cameras and hand held nasty paintball guns that can shoot WAY better then the worn-out crap they rent out at the field😖. They are super nice and will of course refrain from shooting at women in brightly colored coats.....

- do show off your paintball bruises to each-other once you make it home. Especially if they sit in places where you have to pull your pants down to show off the really nasty ones. You don’t want to do that in public!

Needless to say - Luca and Teresa would both love to go again.

Snow day on a Saturday

Henriette yesterday: “I am definitely NOT sitting home all day Saturday. I want to get out of Doylestown and go to Philly”Henriette watching the weather forecast:“😖🤦‍♀️🥺”

The Michigander in me is rolling her eyes of the patheticness of making a big fuzz out of 1-4 inches of snow but Pennsylvania roads are not for the faint of heart as soon as snow and ice hit so we’ll just stay here in top of our hill all day. Sigh.Luckily there is still a day tomorrow to go to Philly and even better - MLK day Monday where both our jobs and the schools have decided to give us time off at the same time. Yay! Luca is away on camp with church. Without his phone!!!! We hope the poor kid will survive. Teresa was gone for a similar trip a few months ago and here’s the exact moment she realized that they actually took the phones away for realz:

Luckily she survived too. And I honestly think it is quite a good way to ensure that all kiddos have real life interactions in real life scenarios.

Otherwise we are making our way through January one day at a time. Like everybody else on the northern hemisphere I guess. We are still keeping up our intention of cooking two vegan meals per week. Last weekend we tried nacho dip for vegan nachos:

Surprisingly good! And based off something as simple as potatoes after applying the no-go technique of blending them (everyone who has had babies has tried to short cut mashed potatoes in the blender and ended up with a sticky gooey mess. Not so good for babies. Awesome for nacho dip!).

Some of us are not vegan at all. Ever:

This is “angry dog” chewing on the antler I happened to find in the grass next to the parking lot at work yesterday. Bailey did not want to share!

Well. I’ll get dressed and take doggo out for a good walk before the snow hits. Hasta la vista✌🏻🌨

Back to business

All good things come to an end. Also Christmas breaks and 2020 is in full swing. It has been good for me with a couple of weeks of mental unplugging to get 2019 all wrapped up and put behind me. It is almost like I can feel the cranks and gears in my brain has fallen into place - probably helped quite a bit by sleeping a lot. When my insomnia was at its worst I almost lost hope that I would ever get to sleep a full night again and it almost feels victorious to be able to sleep again.

So what’s on the agenda for 2020? Many many good things actually. I have a few 2020 resolutions (besides getting myself an assquatch - I have found someone who has a taxidermist friend, so there is hope). One of them is to eat 2 vegan dinners per week. For the climate, for my health, and also from sheer fascination of how to get by in a kitchen using common ingredients in almost magical new ways - aquafaba for instance. The liquid from a can of chickpeas that can be transformed into white fluffy foam as a substitute for egg whites. Here’s one of our dinners. Shepherds pie. Yes. It is vegan!

I want to start investing just a little bit of money. In something that benefits others in a good way. I was thinking micro loans to women starting their own businesses in third world countries (hmmmm. You have first world problems and third world countries - what is the second world?) or investing in green technology.

2020 will also be the year where child #2 will leave the nest. Teresa will be going back to Denmark and (hopefully - we are working on it) spend a year in 3.G. (last year of high school in Denmark) to get back into the Danish way of doing things before deciding what to do and applying for university.

Luca will get to spend a large chunk of the summer in Denmark too. My sister gave him a trip for his confirmation and we have made plans to ensure he can stay for about 5 weeks since it is a big trip. He also gets to go back to Michigan to spend 10 days at blue lake music camp with one of this best friends from Ann Arbor.

And that leaves Kristian and the dog and I to sort of figure what we want to do over the summer. Luckily - or whatever - the American way of vacation will not leave us weeks upon weeks of time off so we’ll probably be doing everyday life like usual.