Pilaris - blog

On Tuesday I decided to check out the sale on Bohus (a furniture and decorating shop), since the store we’ve got here in Halden is closing down. C told me about the sale on Monday, and that there wasn’t much left in the shop, but I gave it a try anyway. Found 6 candles for the tray on my living room table, one picture frame like the ones I’ve bought earlier, two packs of light bulbs for the celing lamp in the kitchen and 6 hanging candle holders for tealights. I’ll use them out on the porch in the summer and inside during winter, but I need to get longer chains for them first.
After shopping I went to H, haven’t spoken to her for about 6 weeks since she’s been on vacation. The date for her heart surgery is set to October 1, so it’ll be the first time she won’t come to my birthdayparty since I got to know her. That’ll be strange… She’s not anxious for the operation yet, but I know I am. It’s probably routine surgery for the doctors, but not for H or the ones around her. But we’ll hope for the best, and that the surgery lets her stop taking some of her medication. She’s gonna try healing in hope that her speach might improve, but she really doesn’t believe in that sort of thing. But better to try than not try! Her daughter E has really grown these last weeks, now she’s sitting by herself (hardly falls backwords), she can clap her hands and she can show how big she is (stretch her arms up). Wonderful little girl 🙂

Yesterday I cut the grass on the smaller part of the lawn, and by doing that I finished all 6 tasks I had set on doing during my vacation. Proud of myself! I might do the rest of the lawn as well, just don’t feel like it today 🙂
I got the cross stitch kit yesterday! I couldn’t believe it when I opened my mail box, just 6 days shipping from the US to Norway! Started stitching yesterday of course, and borrowed C’s sewing machine to prevent the edges from fraying.

So far today, I’ve worked on my cross stitch, read, solved kakuro and spent some time on the computer. Guess the rest of the day will follow that pattern 😉

C came over for a few hours yesterday. Nice to catch up, been ages since we spent some time together. The rest of the evening was spent in front of the computer or reading and solving kakuro.

When I went to bed yesterday, I decided that today would be the day for Arkas’ bath. It was long overdue, but I hate doing it by myself, since hanging over a bath tub really isn’t good for my back. But I kept my promise to myself and started with grooming him in hope of getting rid of as much fur as possible. Then we spent an hour in the bath room… He doesn’t like getting baths, but he accepts it, and once in a while he actually feels safe enough to give me a kiss 🙂 After drying him up as much as possible, I put him out on the porch to dry some more while I had breakfast. Then it was time for some more grooming, he sheds so incredible much fur when wet! Here’s a picture taken after the second grooming:
But now he’s the most beautiful fluffy little boy in the world, and the bath experience obviously wore him out, he’s sleeping like a puppy next to me 🙂

I have a dream! Well…I’ve got several dreams actually, but right now, with a back that’s killing me, I wish I had enough money to renovate my house, especially the bath room, so it would be easier to give Arkas his baths. Maybe the lottery will see my way tomorrow (Extra)? The perfect bath room for giving a dog a bath (I think) would be a huge bath tub where both the dog and I could stand in the tub and the dog would stand on something. That way the whole room wouldn’t get wet (I get wet no matter what I do), and I wouldn’t have to bend my back or sit on my knees. But that wouldn’t be possible in this house, the bath room is too small! *lol*

Didn’t do much yesterday really, but I took Arkas for a long walk. I have to admit that ever since I bought my house, I’ve been lazy with the walks, it’s so much easier to take a stroll around the garden and play a bit with him or do some training. Anyway…I assumed that he would be totally worn out after the walk (I was anyway), but something seemed wrong with him. He could be lying down and then get up again after 5-10 seconds. Then he tried so relax again, but got up again straight away. He kept on doing this for 4 or 5 hours, and I got a bit worried. But sometime last evening he settled down and fell asleep. I thought about it today, and I guess that he might have strained one or several muscles, and because of that wasn’t comfortable with lying still. Have made a mental note of massaging him the next time we’ve walked far.

Today I’m completely exhausted myself. C is coming over tomorrow, which is her first time here. And I’ve been lazy with the cleaning lately, so I’ve really done a lot today. Dusted almost everything on the first floor, vacuumed the entire first floor and the basement and cleaned the toilet and the bath room. The only thing I need to do tomorrow before she arrives, is to vacuum upstairs and take a long and relaxing shower 🙂
But I got a wonderful brake when C and her daughter A dropped by on their way home from the store with ice cream for all of us. A nice little chat on the porch steps.
And yes, I’m talking about two different C’s 🙂

Oh…I almost forgot! On Thursday night I ordered a cross stitch kit on Ebay! It’s this Christmas Tree Skirt with cats and dogs on it, I’ve wanted it for ages, but when it costs nearly NOK 700,-, I just couldn’t afford it. But on Ebay I got it for NOK 280,-, and there might be some custome duty and VAT added, but it’s still a lot cheaper. Can’t wait!!! 🙂

Visited E and her 3 month old daugter E yesterday, had a wonderful time! Haven’t seen E for several months, and have never seen her daughter, but it was a delight, she’s a smiling and happy little girl, even though she got two vaccination shots yesterday.

Met the woman next door when I came home yesterday, and I asked about when she met my mother with Arkas a couple of weeks ago. Luckily nothing had happened, and she assured me that she would have told me if something in fact had happened.

Today I’ve washed four machines of laundry, read a lot and otherwise relaxed. Before I started my vacation, I made a list of 6 things I had to do before going back to work, and I’ve done 4 of them already! Not major things, but things I never get around to do during work days. So I’m feeling pretty proud of myself 🙂

I just have to present these two songs for you, I can’t get enough of them myself, and I hope you like them as well.

Eva Cassidy with Autumn Leaves. Can’t remember how I first heard about Eva, but it wasn’t long ago, and I totally fell in love with her voice. Especially this song.

Espen Lind, Askil Holm, Alejandro Fuentes and Kurt Nilsen with Leonard Cohens song Hallelujah. There has been made lots of great recordings of this song, but I just love these four Norwegian guys. And Cohen himself has said that he enjoyed this recording, that he likes how the voices fit together and complement eachother.

Haven’t been doing much these last few days really. I’ve got two weeks vacation now, and are just going to enjoy them and relax, while doing a few things around the house that needs to be done.

The weekend was really quiet. Pruned the raspberries and the red and black currants. Pulled up quite many small beginning trees from my yard. Watched two movies, on Saturday it was “The Mexican” and on Sunday it was “Lost in Translation”. Didn’t like neither of them really.

Today was a real shopping day, but didn’t go shopping for any fun stuff really. Started with driving the shortest road to Sweden. Then on to my cottage, since my mother and her boyfriend is there, and my mum keeps complaining that she hardly sees me anymore. Spent a couple of hours with them, and then drove to Svinesundparken where I bought more picture frames. I also tried to get more of those white bell flowers, but they were out of those for this season. Have one possibility left on Wednesday, when I’m driving past one of their other stores, but it’s probably too late for flowers this year. But I did buy garden gloves, a small garden spade (can’t find the one I had earlier this year) and a few other small things. Drove into the city, and started at the garage I use for my car. They called me last Thursday and told me that they had gotten the papers from the insuranse company in return, since there wasn’t an accident statement. Nobody had told me that I needed to write one, but the guys at the garage did it for me, I just went down to sign it today. Then I drove to Jysk. They told me last week that they were having a sale on pillows for outdoors furniture, so I just had to take advantage of that. Got 4 pillows that at full price would cost NOK 650,- for just NOK 136,-! I really like those kind of sales! 🙂 I then went to Byggmakker, where I only got a smoke detector, since the one I’ve got now reacts when I’m cooking. Gonna move that to the basement and put the new one up where the old one is now. The next stop was at Malerbua where I bough an ax, so I can protect myself from burglars. No, just kidding 🙂 Needed an ax for cutting the fire wood into smaller pieces. The last stop was Billington, where I bought a fire extinguisher and an electronic device for scaring mice away. Hopefully that’ll work, so Arkas don’t have to share his food next winter.

That’s all folks! 😉

A quick hello to the people I got stuck behind on my way home from work today: You were from Sweden and drove a red Volvo (what else?) station wagon. Yes, I am in fact able to drive and wave at the same time, but since you don’t know how to get your car up to speed limit, you might focus on that instead of waving. Good luck, hope I don’t end up driving behind you again!

There are probably some of you that are wondering why I blog in English instead of Norwegian. Well, I’ve got friends in Australia and one friend in England, and I know that I wouldn’t blog as much if I was to write both in Norwegian and English, so the easiest way is to blog just in English. I guess all of my Norwegian friends have no problems reading English, but let me know if there is something you don’t understand. If that happens, I probably have used a word that I found in the dictionary, and barely know the meaning of myself 😉

The things keeping me busy these days are the stag night and the speach. Obviously I can’t write much about it, but both are making me nervous.
The stag night (or is it a bachelor party? Can someone tell me the difference? We only use one word for it in Norwegian) is just in the beginning, trying to find a date where most guys can come.
The speach is getting there slowly, but I’ll probably alter it a hundred times and driving my friends crazy by reading it to them just as many times before I’m satisfied. A few months ago I “wrote” the whole speach in my head just before falling asleep, but I unfortunately couldn’t remember it the next day.

And, not to forget, I just have this week left to work, and then there’s two weeks vacation! Can’t wait really, even though I don’t have anything planned except for doing bits and pieces at home that I don’t get around to during ordinary weeks.

Well, haven’t written anything for a week, so it’s about time to catch up.
Sunday July 29: The most lazy day for ages! Didn’t do anything useful at all, just relaxed at home all day. Went to C’s in the evening, had a nice chat and a cup of tea.
Monday July 30: Work went as usual, and so did the evening.
Tuesday July 31: Went to C’s again to help with backups of her computers before she and her family went on holidays. Prepared for the next two days of almost not being home.
Wednesday August 1: Drove to H’s house after work to take care of her flowers. Then drove straight to S to have a nice dinner before she, her daughter and I went to the fortress for Allsang på grensen. We sat quite far from the stage, but had a wonderful evening together with almost 10000 people! Drove S home (E had been picked up a bit earlier by her father, she almost fell asleep the poor thing…), and then made the big mistake of deciding to take the shortest way home, where I met almost everyone else from the evening trying to make their way home. Got stuck in traffic for about 45 minutes (which never happens here in Halden usually). Mum and A had taken Arkas for a walk while they were here, mum couldn’t hold him back and he had jumped on the woman living next door. As far as my mum could figure out, nothing had happened, but these things shouldn’t happen at all! Mum hadn’t used the Halti on him, so she didn’t have the strength to hold him back. She thinks it’s so difficult to put on… Got to have a talk with my neighbour, just to hear her side of the story.
Thursday August 2: Arkas went to work with me, well he sat in the car all day while I worked. Took him out a couple of times, but it was a cloudy day luckily, so the car didn’t get that hot. Went straight to S’s after work to celebrate E’s fourth birthday. After about three hours of talking and eating barbecue and cake, I went home and stretched out on the sofa until bedtime.
Today: Planned on attending Down on the Farm, but I felt that it was more a waste of money than anything else, so I spent that money on buying picture frames for the black and white pictures that’ll go up on my bedroom walls. Need more frames though, a great gift tip for my birthday and for Christmas? 😉 Haven’t been online since Tuesday, so have done a bit of reading tonight, trying to catch up on journals, groups and home pages.
Haven’t gotten the flat screen yet, but I know from earlier that it takes some time. But I won another prize this week at the same radio station! I sent in a text message on Tuesday to their traffic central, telling about a crash between a car and a motorcycle not far from where I work and the traffic jam that came out from that. At work the next day, a girl told me that I had won, they pick out one that tells them about something from the roads of Norway. I hadn’t heard anything from them, but they called me later that day, and I won a year of free car assistance. A bit ironic really since my car hopefully will be as good as new in a few weeks time, but it’s fun anyway 🙂 Probably don’t have any luck left for ages now.
By the way: can hear them playing at Down on the Farm, and just at this moment it’s Sivert Høyem that’s playing, but I can’t actually hear him, just the bass and drums 🙂

I don’t think I’ve done anything else than reading this week…Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Finished today, and I’m left with a numb feeling…it’s all over, no more Harry and Ron and Hermione and all the rest. I’m not going to give the ending away, so I’ll just leave it with this.

Next week will be quite busy, not often that happens 😉
On Wednesday, I’ll be attending the last Allsang på Grensen (Sing-along-at-the-border) this year. For those of you that don’t know what this is, I’ll try and explain. Swedish television has for several years had a music summer show called Allsång på Skansen, where artists perform while the audience sings along. This year Norwegian television decided to try the same, and they located it at the fortress here in Halden. They record it on Wednesdays and air it on Thursdays, and for 5 weeks the success has been incredible, with about 7000 people as audience (they don’t let any more people in due to safety), and about 50 % of Norwegian telly viewers watching the show. I haven’t had the chance to go there earlier since that would leave Arkas home alone for about 16 hours (first work, then the show), but my mum and her boyfriend is taking care of Arkas Wednesday. The artist I really want to see is Ingrid Bjørnov, she’s a great piano player and writes incredible funny lyrics about every day life. S and I went to see Bjørnov’s show a few years back, it was wonderful. I’ll meet S and her daugter E at the fortress, that’ll be fun.
On Thursday E is turning 4 years old, so I’ll be at her birthday party after work. Can’t believe it’s been 4 years already, time flies by so incredible fast!
On Friday I’m planning on spending a few hours at Down on the Farm (in English: Down on the Farm). I really want to hear Willam Hut and Sivert Høyem, but the price is what’s bugging me, NOK 570,-. I know it’s not much for listening to two artists (and one inbetween that I don’t know who are), but for me that’s a lot of money, especially spent on something “unimportant”. Well, I’ll just have to think about it during the week and see what I decide. I was there last year together with my boyfriend at the time, see the entry Previous entries from my old blog and find the title Festivaltid (in Norwegian).