Kitty’s Place

So tomorrow we have an appointment at Löwenströmska sjukhuset (try and say that three time in a row *laugh*) in Upplands Väsby. The kidlet is going to see an ear,nose & throat specialist about this cough and snoring respirations. I told his dad when the paper came in the mail that we had this appointment Thursday. So being the great fellow he is, he checked out the best route for us to take there. But for some reason he thought we were going to Karolinska sjukhuset in Sollentuna. So I said we could take the bus and he said we would need to take the train. This is what comes of being unable to say Löwenströmska. *laugh* Now we have it sorted out and the final consensus is we will take the bus from the centrum here, direct to the hospital there. Then we will go from the hospital to the train station and take the train home, since the kidlet loves the train so much. I do hope this doctor can tell us what the problem is and correct it. 3 year olds should not have little black circles under their eyes from lack of restful sleep.

I am sick as the proverbial dog yet again. Sunday we traveled to Hässelby Gård to work. On the way we stopped at Burger King for a kids meal, which the kidlet paid for himself. He wanted to order it too, but couldn’t get his order out so the cashier could understand it. *smile* I will survive this “kan själv” period, really I will! Then we stopped at a korv place at the train station and I got a sausage on a bun. Well the kidlet ate half my lunch, all of his and then finished off my Coke while I was working. Brat child. *laugh* The entire time I was cleaning my head felt like it would explode. We headed home and my fellow picked us up at the train station and we went to his parents house for dinner. His mormor and morfar are in town for a week, so we had a visit with them. After we came home and put the kidlet to bed, I just felt horrid, so I went to bed early. The minute I laid down my sinuses started draining and I have been coughing, sniffling and running a fever since. At least the headache is gone. *smile* To make things even worse, the cartoon network disappeared this week, so the option of watching cartoons while laying on the couch, is gone. Instead I have had to play lots of kids games and put together kid puzzles endlessly. I have bundled up and taken the kidlet out to play in the snow every day though. He loves snow as much as I do.

Aunt Maud called on Monday. She is going to decide whether to come in the spring or the summer and then I can plan our trip to Canada accordingly. I suggested she come in April or early May, since the weather will be nice then and it is before the air rates go up to summer rates. I am so looking forward to having her come to visit and see where we live and meet my fellows’ family.

I am trying to figure out what to call my fellows’ grandparents. They are mormor and morfar to him, so what are they to our kidlet? Gammal mormor and gammal morfar (my choice) or gammal farmor and gammal farfar (which I have heard his mom say to the kidlet)? I do think it is funny that the kidlet is old enough to understand how we are related. He knows that farmor is his fathers mom and that gammal mormor is farmors’ mom. He can explain who is what to whom quite clearly. *laugh* He also calls farmor by her given name now, thus avoiding having to say farmor, which for some reason he will not say. Farmor is not really to happy about that. My fellow never called her mamma, he always called his parents by their given names. Her daughter calls her dad pappa, but calls her mom by her given name. So she was hoping that her grandson would call her farmor. I don’t know why he won’t, but he just refuses to. Must be some genetic thing. *laugh* He also has learned our names and can say that mamma is “teetee” and pappa is “ebbo”. This is when it is the best to be a mom. *smile*

Topic: Food

When I was growing up, Saturday nights my parents went out for dinner and dancing. I was about 14 when they decided we no longer needed a babysitter since I was old enough to be responsible. The fact we lived in a duplex with family in the other half of the house was also taken into consideration.

One Saturday night we decided we wanted popcorn. This was pre hot air popper days. I got out the big heavy pressure cooker that my dad used when he made popcorn. Then I retrieved the bag of popping corn, oil and butter. My brothers and sister waited anxiously as I popped a big pot of fresh popcorn. When it was done I transferred it to a big green tupperware bowl and then melted butter to go on it. Little did I know that an entire pound of butter was too much. I poured on the butter and watched in disbelief as the popcorn shrunk to a mess of wilted kernels in a soup of butter.

My siblings saw my look of shock and one of them grabbed the bowl, spilling the entire contents onto the kitchen floor. It took 3 days and multiple scrubbings before we did not skate across the kitchen floor every time we entered the room. 30 years later we still giggle about that night.

Topic: Love

Love That Never Fades

This is not my love story. Well it is in a way of course. 67 years ago my grandparents married. They were 3rd cousins and grew up in a little itty bitty english farming community in Quebec.

My grandfather was a river driver and would be gone for long periods during the drive. My grandmother kept their home and children safe and happy.

They had 5 children, 4 girls and then a boy. (my mom was the middle child) Grandma was pregnant with my uncle when they left Quebec and moved to Ontario, where Grandpa had gotten a job as a machinist in a nickel factory. They settled there and have been in the same home there for 58 years.

We grew up in a house across the street from them. Naturally we spent as much time there as at home. I loved to be there when my grandfather got home from work. He would come in the door, put his arms around my grandmother and say “and how’s my beauty today” as he gave her a kiss. I decided then that when I was married I would remember to tell my mate every day how much I loved him, like my grandparents did.

They have always done special little things for each other and after all these years, they still do. Grandpa will be 91 this month and Gram will be 85 a few days later. He gets up before her in the morning and sets out her breakfast. She sits down each evening and sorts out his pills for the next day. They have weathered many storms. They are the last of their families still living, they have lost 2 children, two son in laws and one grandchild. But the love they have has sustained them and been like a beacon to all of us.

My dad used to call them “the river driver and his beauty” and tell us how he admired the way they showed their love and commitment to each other and to family. He was right to admire that and I admire it too.

Topic: Journeys

The Ultimate Summer Holiday

It was the summer of 1975. I was 17 years old and my dad was between jobs. Literally between them. After working for years at an autoplant 30 minutes drive away, he had taken a job as a crane operator in a business that was a 3 minute walk from home. For some reason he decided that he was not going to work that summer, instead he was going to pack us up and take us on a summer long driving trip across the continent.

My parents bought a new truck with an extended cab and put a camper on the back. They hitched the housetrailer we camped in every summer to it. Then they packed up 6 kids ranging in age from 18 (my best friend) to 10 (my little sister). Another family that we camped with every summer made the trip as well, 5 kids in a Winnebago with their long suffering parents. It was the landmark event of our childhood. To this day we date things from it “it was the summer after we drove west”.

We crossed over to the US from Ontario to New York state (Buffalo) and started our way to the west coast. The memories of that trip are many, some vague and some still clear as a bell. We saw the Black Hills, Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone National Park. Each evening the 4 adults would sit down with the maps and the brochures they had accumulated during the day. They would map what cool things we look at the next day. We drove miles off the main highways to see some touristy roadside attraction. We got caught on an overpass one night in the middle of a tornado. All the campgrounds were full and in desperation my dad pulled off the road into a farmer’s empty field. The farmer braved the storm to come out and throw us off his land. He was apologetic but said that if he let us stay then others would stop there too. So we continued travelling and met the worst of the storm on an overpass. I have rarely ever again been that scared in the 20 some years since it happened.

We crossed back into Canada from Washington State into British Columbia. The memories of this half of the trip are clearer because they involve family. Our first stop was to visit my dad’s youngest sister and her girls. Her husband was in the military and spent long months in the far north on the DEW line. I hadn’t seen my cousins in a long time and we stayed up all night giggling. That visit served to cement the bond between us all. My aunt told my dad that she could show how to get to Stanley Park. We all crowded into the 2 vehicles and started out. My aunt watched closely and then said “There! That is the bus to the park, we just follow it”. While we were in B.C. we took the ferry over to Vancouver Island. I had never been on a ferry before and it was so cool. My best friend and I decided not to talk during the trip and signed to each other instead for the duration. It was great fun.

We went to Drumheller where they have dug up so many dinosaur remains. My dad’s great aunt lived there. She was very elderly and did not recognize us when we came to the door, then she spied our dog and cried “It’s the wee dog. The wee dog! It’s Port Colborne folk you are” in a thick scottish brogue. She had come to Canada expecting to find the refined lifestyle she was accustomed to in Scotland. Instead she found herself homesteading in the vast and wild west. She showed us her treasures, the linens, china and crystal that she had brought from “home” expecting to use them for her entertaining. Instead they lived in a trunk and only saw the light of day when special guests were allowed to gaze upon her prized possessions. When we left Drumheller we took her grandchildren with us, they were travelling back home from their summer visit with her.

In Calgary we visited my dad’s brother. He was blinded in an industrial accident before I was born and worked at the Institute for the Blind in Calgary. It was there I first encountered cross walk signs that beeped so people would know it was time to walk. We camped out in the parking lot of the zoo and stayed there for the Calgary Stampede. We learned to use a lariat and all got cowboy hats. Best of all we learned to holler “Yeehaw!”. For me, the highlight of being in Calgary was the afternoon we went to the theatre and saw the new hit movie of the summer, “Tommy”. I fell in love with Roger Daltry that day. We left off our cousins from Drumheller and took with us my aunt and 3 of our cousins from Calgary and headed east again.

We stopped at a place that sold 5 cent ice cream cones and when we ordered 40 there was a pause in conversation and then a whisper through the shop “they want 40!”. My aunt took us to dinner at a Ponderosa type restaurant. Earlier in the day her youngest had left his running shoes on the back bumper of the truck and when we arrived at the next destination, only one remained. When the bill came for dinner he sadly intoned to his mom “boy we could buy a lot of runners for that much money”.

In Manitoba we left our cousins and aunt with her mom. We went to Red Rock and I got my first real whiff of what a town that depends on pulp and paper for industry, smells like. Last summer when we were in Finland, we drove into a town and I tur
ned to my fellow and said “they have a paper mill here” and of course, they did. I have never forgotten that smell. We visited with my mom’s uncle and his family there. They had a cottage on a lake. They owned all the property around the entire lake and were the only people out there in the summer. That was where I learned about saunas. They had a small building beside the cottage and we asked what it was. My great aunt said “put on your bathing suits and you will find out”. So we sat in the sauna and took turns throwing water on the stones to make steam until we had enough and then we ran and swam in the cool, crystal clear lake.

There were many other things we saw that summer. The Rocky Mountains, Banff, a real glacier, a bear wandering around the highway on her morning stroll. The memories of that summer come back to me often and they are always accompanied by the thought of what extraordinary parents we had to have given us that experience.

Topic: Things we throw away

The Thimble

I was lucky enough to have had my great grandmother as part of my life until my 16th year. We spent many hours together and after her death my grandmother put aside things for us great grandchildren.

My nana treasures are a small cedar lined wooden hankie box, 3 hand embroidered hankies, a pair of mini slippers knit with the ends of wool that would otherwise be wasted and nana’s thimble.

The first year I was married I went all out for christmas. I put aside one afternoon for baking. There were chocolate mint squares, grandma g’s shortbread, shortbread cookies cut into shapes and thimble cookies with my own strawberry jam. I baked away happily and when it came time to make the thimble cookies, it was nana’s thimble that made the impression in them.

As I finished baking, we had unexpected guests. I hurried through the clean up and then threw together a dinner for us all. After they left we finished cleaning up the dishes and went off to bed. My husband put out the garbage while I was preparing for bed.

At about 3 am I woke and knew something was wrong. But whatever was it that was gnawing at the edges of my memory? The thimble! I hadn’t put it back in its’ usual place, on display in our curio cabinet. I got out of bed and began to search for it, but to no avail. My mind went into reverse and I replayed the entire afternoon and evening. There! Back up! Yes, there it was, sitting on the waxed paper that I then balled up and threw into the garbage as I hurried through my cleanup.

I opened the door, but the garbage was not under the sink. My heart dropped to my toes. I couldn’t wake my husband, he would have laughed at me. It was not the first totally bizarre thing to happen to me and would not be the last.

3:30 am and there I was in the garbage room. As I looked at all the green garbage bags I tried to figure out which was ours. Luckily there were only two with red twist ties and even luckier for me, I picked the right one first. A dig into the bag yielded the ball of wax paper and inside, my treasured thimble. I carried it across the hall triumphantly and after a good washing it went back to the cabinet, never again to be used for baking.

Topic: Boo

Goodbye

My childhood was filled with books. We were raised with a love of books, from a very young age. I thought everyone in the world must love books as much as I did. As I got older though, I came to understand that there were “book people” and there were “others”. Anne was a book person.

Anne was related on my dads’ side. She lived in a little house out in the country. There was the big house, where her mother in law lived, the stables, open fields and then the little white house. She was a happy, loving woman who always made you feel welcome and knew how to transcend the age barrier between children and adults. Best of all, she was a reader. I spent hours looking at her books and wishing I was old enough to read them.

Anne died young. She had cancer and I understand now that she was very ill for a long time. But as a child I didn’t know that. The loss of weight and the slowing of her movements was just something that happened to grownups. Not long before her death, we were out to the little white house for a visit. She took me aside and gave me a gift. It was a set of books! There was Arabian Nights, Heidi, Ton Sawyer, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and others of that ilk. It was the best gift I had ever received and I was ecstatic. It was just a few weeks later that I woke in the night. The clock said it was 2:30 in the morning and I had such an odd feeling that something was wrong. I turned my head from the clock and looked to the foot of my bed. There stood Anne. She didn’t look like she had the last time we visited. She looked happy and healthy, as she had for so many years. She put a finger to her lips to silence me, then she looked around my room, smiled again and then was gone. I heard the phone ringing in another room and my mom crying and saying “when” and I knew the call was about Anne. When I got up and told my mom about seeing her, she said I was being silly. So it was many years before I ever told anyone else about Anne coming to me after she had died.

The day of her funeral we went back to the little white house and brought home a bookshelf that Anne wanted me to have. That shelf and those books have been with me for all of my life and her memory remains vivid.

Topic: School Stories

Red rover, red rover …

I must have been 7 that year. We had moved from the city to a farm in the country and gone from a school with 7 separate classes to one with 3 classes. There was combined grades 1/2, 3/4 and 5/6 in our little country school. I was in grade 2 that year.

We had a teacher who can best be described as “touched”. I remember her name as Miss Bikini but of course that really isn’t it. She had our little group of 6 and 7 year olds under her charge. Early in the school year she informed us that she was not human. She said she was an alien from outerspace and that she and others of her kind had come to earth and inhabited human bodies, to see if we were worth invading. Remember, this was 1965. We hadn’t the exposure to films like E.T. or Alien back then and grasping the concept was difficult for us little kids. We just knew she was weird.

One sunny day, during lunchbreak, we decided to play Red Rover. So teams were chosen and the other team sent their player over first. Then they chanted “red rover red rover, let Kitty come over” and I ran as fast and hard as I could so I could break through their line. Too late I discovered the folly of having one team line up against a brick wall. I hit the wall full force and as I lay on the ground, I really did see stars. On my forehead appeared a huge goose egg. We went back to class and Miss Bikini never asked about my injury, although it must have been obvious to her that I was hurt. As the afternoon wore on, I suffered more symptoms of the concussion I had. Repeatedly I asked for permission to go to the bathroom to throw up and repeatedly I was told I could wait for recess. Finally I got up and left without permission. I did not want to be like Darlene, who asked over and over to go to the bathroom to pee and was denied, until she wet her pants and then was mocked by the teacher. If I was going to throw up, it was going to be in the bathroom, not on my desk. Needless to say, I was a sick little girl and it took a couple days of bedrest before I was able to go back to school. My mom complained to the principal about the fact she was not contacted when I was hurt and a new policy went into effect that all injuries were to be reported to the principal immediately. On the playground we had a new rule too. Red Rover was only played in the open field, away from walls.

(part two)

She was most definitely odd. The following year she had two of my brothers in her class. Two incidents that occured led to her dismissal that year.

The first involved my middle brother. He was in the first grade and one morning, after making a mistake in his printing he scribbled it out, since he had no eraser. Miss Bikini took a pen and scribbled all over
his face. When my mom went to the school and complained, the teacher told the principal that she was only trying to teach him it was wrong to scribble.

The second incident involved my brother who is a year younger than me. He was a second grader at that point. He sat behind a cousin of ours named Mark. Mark irritated her one day during class and she grabbed him and banged his head on the upraised desktop behind him. Under that desktop was my brother, who was searching for something in his desk at the time. The top of the desk fell on his head and injured him. Of course, following my accident the year previous, she was obliged to report his injury and Marks’. She tried explaining the incident as one where Mark sat back in his chair, hit the desktop himself and it fell. I remember my mother raging about at that point. She went to speak with Marks’ aunt and convinced her to come along to the next board meeting and also stirred up some of the other parents. Miss Bikini was let go.

What truly amazes me is the fact that the other parents let this behaviour go on unchecked. Their children were also being traumatized by this nut. Perhaps it was a farm mentality thing. Adversity would make them stronger or some such philosophy. I do know that it gave my mom a reputation. We moved back into town at the end of that year and went back to the first school I had attended. One morning I overheard two teachers talking and this came to my ears: “watch your step with those Gillespie kids or their mom will be making a fuss about you with the board”. I felt lucky to have had a mom who cared enough to have gained a reputation like that. *smile*

Topic: s3×0r

Caught … not

When I was dating my ex husband, I was also a student in college. On a couple of occasions I blew off Friday classes and made the 2 hour bus trip to where he lived. At that time my parents didn’t know I was seeing anyone or that I was cutting classes that they were paying for. *smile*

One Friday I headed off to spend the weekend with him. He was looking for work, having been recently laid off. The first thing we did of course when I arrived was go to bed. What else do 20 somethings do when they are in love? *laugh* He lived in a basement apartment with hedges in front of the windows so we never ever bothered to close the blinds. So there we were in the throes of passion when I heard the clicking of brisk heels passing the window and turned my head. What I saw made me freeze and all thoughts of sex flew out of my mind. It was my moms’ auburn beehive hairdo that was suddenly there in front of my eyes. I knew she was going to come and pound on the door and yell at me for cutting class (I never even thought about her reaction to my having sex with a man 8 years older than me, whom she had never even heard of).

I jumped out of bed and grabbed my clothes, shaking. My ex jumped up too, wondering what in the world was wrong and probably also wondering if we were going to finish what we had been doing. *laugh* Of course all of you have already figured out what he so calmly explained to me as I waited for that door knock. It was not my mom, could not have been my mom, since she had no idea I was even seeing anyone and could not have known who he was and where he lived even if she suspected. Later that weekend we met the new girlfriend of the man across the hall, she of the clicking heels and auburn beehive do. My guilt finally made me do what I should have done weeks before, I told my parents about my boyfriend and introduced him to them. I also never had sex again without closing those blinds. *laugh*

Topic: How Embarrassing

A Perfect Date

This isn’t my story, it is one I heard from my sister about one of her college classmates. She was a fun loving, plus size girl. She dated often but there one fellow she had been interested in for a long time. When he asked her out to dinner she was ecstatic.

Since they were going out to a fancy seafood restaurant, she dressed to the nines. She asked her friends about fake nails and my sister suggested the Lee Press On ones, that m
y mom used. She got really long red ones and put them on after getting dressed in a nice black dress and heels. With her hair done, nails in place and outfit sorted she was off for one lovely evening. The one thing she was not wearing was her glasses and she did not own contacts.

During dinner, which included lobster tails, she was aghast to see someting red floating in the melted butter. Rather than make a fuss she just moved it aside and continued eating without using the butter. Then she spied something red in her salad. That was the point when she looked at her hands and saw that half the nails were missing. So she politely excused herself from the table and made her way to the ladies room where she removed the rest of the nails. She also slipped off the pinching heels and took a moment to use the facilities. Then she made her way back to the table, carrying herself like a queen. As she sat down the waitress caught up with her and whispered that she has toilet paper stuck in her shoe. Well it wasn’t a piece, it was a piece attached to the roll and she had made a trail from the bathroom to the table.

That was the point where I would have slid to the ground and crawled off in embarrassment. My sisters friend did no such thing. She threw back her head and roared out laughter. Her date joined in and eventually they had everyone laughing with them. He said he had wanted to tell her about the fingernails but didn’t know her so well and didn’t want to hurt her feelings. That instant they became great friends and her perfect date, that could have gone awry, really was perfect. *smile*

Topic: Ewwwwwww, Gross

No Extra Charge

When we were kids there was a store close by run by an ancient woman. She had boxes of penny candy in the window. Those green mint leaves and bubble gums and every kind of childhood memory candy you can imagine. She also had a big old cat that lay in the window, on the candy. *laugh* We were young, grade 2 and 3 range, but we knew never to buy penny candy from her. The school yard talk was that the cat also peed on that candy.

But she had other cool stuff that we had to go in and look at, colouring books, crayons, coloured pencils and assorted kid bait. One afternoon we stopped in and she had candy bars on sale. We knew she didn’t keep those in the window so they must be safe. After forking out allowance money we headed home with our treats. But it was not meant to be. The chocolate was not the only thing in the package. Along with our purchase was a teeming mass of maggots and they didn’t even cost extra. Without ever having seen or heard of maggots, we were very sure they were not edible. *laugh* Needless to say that was the last time we ever bought foodstuffs of any sort there, but it didn’t stop us from going back. *smile*

In retrospect, I wonder how she managed to stay open at all. You would think there would have been health inspectors to close such places. But then again, she was on the same street where there was a used furniture store where one of the employees lay on a sofa in the window every afternoon to expose himself to the school children walking home. Guess our route home included the not so nice section of town. *laugh*

Topic: It’s my party …

Wasn’t that a Party?

It was New Years Eve, my last year of high school. I had only ever been allowed one unchaperoned party prior to this one and it had been a mild affair with a dozen classmates, 12 beers and 1 small bottle of Lonesome Charlie in the fruit punch. So this party was still at test phase as far as my parents were concerned. I had met a fellow a couple months previously and we had been out a couple time to dances, but more of the friend type thing, no kissing a bit of hand holding. I asked him to the party.

My parents left for their dinner dance thingy and my friends arrived as well as some of my cousins. Of course all my younger siblings were home as well. The party went along splendidly. We had some wine and music and it was great fun. Then around about 9 pm my little brother got sick, really horribly sick. I was scared
to death and went next door to the neighbours who were also family and asked them to come and see if he needed to go to the emergency room. The diagnosis was acute drunkeness. He was only 12 and I was shocked. I could not figure out how he got so drunk, since we only had a couple bottles of wine and they had been in front of me all evening. Then the story came out. He wanted to party too, so he snuck out the bottle of rye from the back of the cupboard. That bottle constituted the entire stock of alcohol in our home and the last time it had been out, my mom had to remove cobwebs from it. He drank an unknown amount and was some smashed. Our neighbour said to put him to bed and someone had to sit with him so he didn’t vomit and aspirate. It put quite a damper on the party and most of the guests left although my cousins stayed to take turns sitting with my brother while he slept.

Then the next problem came to mind. My dad always did bed check before he went to sleep. He liked all us kids home in our own beds at night and always peeked in on us to see if we were sleeping. My mom said he looked even when we sleeping over somewhere else. So how we were going to keep him from doing bed check and finding a drunken preteen? If he did, it was a fair bet that none of my younger siblings would ever be allowed a party while living at home. So I enlisted the help of my “date”. He stuck around and waited for my parents to come home. Then he chatted up my dad for a good hour until dad was finally so sleepy he just went to bed, no bed check done. Whew!

As soon as he went to bed my mom wanted to know the scoop. You really couldn’t put anything over on her. We told her what had happened and she checked my brother who was sound asleep. She was a bit upset we had not taken him to the hospital but calmed down when she found out that her cousin (the neighbour) had been over and checked him out. She kept the story from my dad and in the morning let on my brother had a bug when he was too sick and hungover to do much of anything. My poor date finally got to leave at 3 am, he who had to be at the arena at 5 am to play hockey. We had our first kiss at the door that night. He certainly deserved one. My little brother was fine if hungover and all of my brothers and my sister did get to have parties as they grew older. As for me, it wasn’t until I was married that I ever had another party.

Topic: Sad songs they say …

When I was in high school my moms’ cousin was a drummer in a local bar band. Myself and a couple other girls from school used to go out every Saturday night to see them play. My parents didn’t fuss because they knew that her cousin would never let any harm come to me. It was one of the best times in my life.

The lead singer in the band was named Dennis, a very kind and gentle person who looked like he was a member of a biker gang. I was always slightly unnerved around him, although I knew I was safe with him and that he watched out for us girls just as much as my moms’ cousin did. One of the songs the band did was ‘It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference’ by Todd Rundgren. When Dennis sang it I felt the words working their way right into my soul. It became Dennis’ song.

That year of school ended and I went off to college, met a fellow, married him and began training to be a RN. There was no more time for following the band, but every time I heard that Rundgren song on the radio I smiled as I thought of Dennis.

One morning the alarm went off and as usual I listened to the local news. They reported a fatal accident in my home town. No names were released, just the fact that a man in his 30’s had been killed and the 18 year girl in the car was injured. I went to school and asked if anyone there had more info. No one did, but there were a lot of sarcastic comments about what a man that age was doing with a girl that young in his car at 3 am. I fretted all morning and during lunch break I called my mom. She was the one who broke the news that the man who had been killed was Dennis.

At that time I was doing my psychiatric rotation and we
were coming up on clinical days, I knew I would not be able to go home and attend Dennis’ funeral, but I really wanted to. Our psych teacher, Mr. Z. came upon me in tears in the student lounge later that day and I told him the story. The band had been playing a gig, after closing time a group met up as usual with the guys as they wound down. The passenger in the car was a girl from Buffalo and the people she came with decided not to go back home. She was upset because she had told her parents she would be home that night. So Dennis offered to take her. At the same time a young boy, on house arrest because of previous juvenile crimes, snuck out of the house, stole a car and then drove to the police station to taunt the police. A high speed chase was the result. As Dennis’ car pulled into an intersection, the kid in his stolen car hit the drivers side of Dennis’ car full force. The kid had no injuries.

Mr. Z. listened to everything I said and then told me he did not want to see me at our clinical placement. He said he expected me to go home and pay my respects at the funeral of my friend. He also said that while there are obligations that we have to meet in our lives, we should do our best to live our lives with no regrets. Missing that funeral would be a regret and he did not think it was a necessary one.

I went to the funeral. It was one of the biggest funerals I have ever been to and the diversity of the group said a lot about the man, Dennis. The following year I went to another funeral. Mr. Z. was suffering from terminal cancer when he sat down to comfort me that afternoon and it was his funeral I attended. I learned his lesson well and live my life with no regrets.

So these days, when I play that song, I feel Dennis’ love for his music and remember the wise words of Mr. Z. It is a very special song.

Today I taught the kidlet how to make snow angels. It snowed in the night and we have about 3 cm on the ground. We had a snowball fight and he made me snow pizza. We skipped going to playgroup, instead we had two long walks and playtime in the snow.

January is a tough month. I think because we lost most of the month the year my mom died. It has been 10 years now but I still miss her every day. We had a good christmas and a quiet new years that year but very soon into January she got so ill that she had to go into the hospital. After he visited her in the hospital, my middle brother said “this time she was not going to come home” and he knew it because she didn’t have her “visitor’s face on”. It was a very astute observation. My mom did have a face she showed to the world during the long years she battled cancer. No matter what pain she was in, she would smile and laugh when anyone came in to see her. But that last month, her pain was too great and she knew the end was near and stopped trying to fool the world.

She was in the hospital for 3 weeks. She was in such pain, since the cancer was in her bones by then. They started out giving her morphine in pill form, then they went to giving it rectally, she was also getting extra morphine by IV push if she needed it. Finally I had enough and I went to the nurse manager and asked why there was no continuous morphine drip. She said that since it was rare that they gave morphine by that route, no one really was sure what dosage to give. I was appalled at their ignorance and went back to my moms’ room and wrote out a paper showing what the oral dosage she was receiving was, how much extra she was needing between regular doses and then calculated how much she would need intravenously to equal that amount over a 24 hour period. As a nurse I had been caring for terminal patients for many years and while I did not want to step on feet in the small town where my mom was hospitalized, I could not watch her suffer. I gave the notes I made to my dad when he came in the morning to relieve me and asked him to pass them on to the doctor.

At that point I was sleeping on a cot at her bedside and spending about 15 hours a day there. My ex was a rock through it all, driving me back and forth, spending time with my siblings and being supportive all around. That evening when I returned, the drip was in place and my mom was comfortable. She never had pain again except when her IV infiltrated once. She slept most of the time but did wake to speak to people off and on. I always knew who had been in during the day because in the night my mom would repeat the conversations in her sleep. It was a tough time all around. My grandparents did not want to believe she was dying, my youngest brother was having a hard time dealing with that fact also. There were just so many of us and we were so close and all loved her so much. We supported one another and got on each others nerves at times.

One of my aunts had a birthday while my mom was in the hospital and when she came to visit she mentioned it was her birthday. My mom cried because she didn’t remember it and that was important to her. She always remembered special dates and made the effort to call or visit or at least send a card. Another day I spent an hour filing and painting her nails. When we were done she looked at her hands and was aghast. They were bruised and swollen and she wanted to know whose hands they were, they could not be hers.

I wasn’t with my mom when she died. We knew it was coming. The evening before that inevitable change came. Her breathing changed and the coma state deepened. My brother called the funeral home run by a cousin of my moms and made preliminary arrangements. Most of the family stayed late that night, taking turns sitting with my mom. When they all went home, my ex stayed. I stayed with my mom most of the night, he took over occasionally. When my dad and sister came in the morning, I hugged my mom and whispered to her that we were all prepared and she didn’t have to fight for us any l
onger, I told her to be at peace. Two hours later she was gone and I had lost not only my mom, but my best friend.

So January is the month I mourn anew. This year is tougher because as I replay those memories in my mind, I see the people who were there with me and now are gone on to join my mom. Perhaps the passing of the month will also exorcise the ghosts haunting my dreams these days. *smile*

For the past month my dreams have been haunting me. Since my aunt died, I have not had one night where I haven’t dreamed about the people I love who have died. My mom is prominent in those dreams as is my dad. The disturbing part is that I keep being told that before my 45th birthday I am going to be with them all, but first I am going to give birth to a daughter. It would be funny if I was not so exhausted from the mental strain of it. Night before last Tom showed up as well. I still miss him so much and I think of him often. But I have never dreamt about him, until now. He said we will have such fun when I “get there”. I do hope these dreams soon run their course. It is almost the anniversary of my mom’s death, so perhaps that will exorcise these ghosts.

Thinking about Tom has made me chuckle. He was so funny and sweet. There are best friends from our childhood and then if we are lucky, there are best friends in our adult life as well. Tom was my best friend in adult life. We were just coworkers to start and our friendship grew in leaps and bounds. There were just so many things we had in common and we thought about things in such a similar way. He was the best person to shop with and sometimes we literally collapsed with laughter during those shopping trips. We painted a ceiling in my house, using broomsticks and paint rollers. But neither of us really had a clue what we were doing and we managed to drip as much paint onto ourselves as we got on the ceiling. We had dance days. Flashdance was the big movie and we would put on the album and then do the dances from the movie, in my living room. We spent quiet afternoons at his place, reading and drinking tea and discussing the woes of the world and how we could fix them. But we couldn’t of course. Just as we couldn’t fix it when he tested HIV positive. By then he had moved away, he went to work in the first official AIDS unit at a big city hospital. Maybe he knew then he was infected. He never talked about it. He never talked about being gay either. For a long time he even denied he was but as time passed he learned that his friends would not turn away from him because of it. I was hurt that he lied to me but he said he lied to everyone, even himself, for a very long time. We kept in touch and visited back and forth. But after he was diagnosed, he began to pull away and eventually he dropped out of sight. A friend ran into him one night at a club and he literally turned his back on the friend and walked out of the club. Was it anger at his lot in life? Was it a defense mechanism, if none of us knew how he was, he would live on healthy in our memories? I won’t ever know of course. I got an unexpected card on day, it just said “hi, miss you, do you still dance? meow meow Tom” and there was a picture enclosed. It was one of him in the days we first met, at a staff party of some type. I never heard from him again and a few month later a mutual friend broke the news that he had died. The picture is in my jewelery box and I used to take it out when I was really sad and it made me smile. Today it is in storage in Canada, but I wish it was here so I could see his mischievous smile and feel that warmth in my heart.

Sometimes the news get me into a rage and sometimes it just confuses the heck out of me.

I have been pondering about this editorial for almost 3 weeks. I lived through this. I remember the terror we all felt when we knew there was a serial killer in our midst. The sorrow when the bodies were discovered. I remember an incident when a patient told one of my coworkers about his experience as a butcher and how he could dismember a human body if he chose to. Mind games and constant suspicions were the norm in our community. Then the arrest and the news of the deal cut with Karla. People were reeling from the fact that our nightmare demon, who plucked two children from our midst and brutally murdered them, was not a single man, not two men as was suspected, but a perfect looking young couple. A handsome young man and his pretty wife. But it didn’t stop there. That handsome young man was not just the killer of those two girls, but also a serial rapist who terrorized women in a Toronto community for months. Then came the disclosure that not only had they murdered Leslie and Kristen, they were also responsible for the death of Karlas’ own sister. These two were monsters to the nth degree.

So what good did destroying the evidence from Bernardo’s trial do? It didn’t bring those girls back. It wasn’t as if that evidence was going to be made public. Why was it not enough to seal that evidence forever. Because what if? What if by some strange unforeseen circumstance this case gets reopened? The physical evidence is gone.

But more scary is the other what ifs. What if the evidence that convicted Guy Paul Morin (another case I remember too well) had been destroyed? (See here and here) If there had been no physical evidence for dna testing to be done on, 3 years after his conviction. When he stood trial, first in 1986 and again in 1992, the type of DNA testing that exonerated him, did not exist. But that old evidence, kept safe for those intervening years, was what overturned his conviction. What if Christines’ family had demanded that all physical evidence be destroyed in an effort to find closure? Then Morin would still be in jail for the murder he was innocent of committing. I agree with the journalist who wrote this column. We are looking a very scary precedent in the face and I for one would not want to be a wrongly convicted person in a place where the evidence that convicted me and might one day free me, could be destroyed to bring peace of mind to the victims family.

I can finally reach lj again.

There isn’t a lot to relate for this past week. Sunday we went to my fellows’ parents for dinner. It is a 10 minute stroll from here and we walked over. (people who are dizzy are wise not to drive cars, thus the walking) It wiped him out. He got so pale and had to rest on the couch. He couldn’t eat much and we got a ride home after fika, from his dad. They have invested in a booster car seat for the kidlet so now we don’t have to worry about the switching of carseats back and forth. That was a nice surprise.

Monday the kidlet and I took the train to Upplands Väsby and did some shopping. There were a few things I needed and I was on the lookout for a glögg set to send to my brother, but couldn’t find a nice one. We let pappa sleep and have some quiet time. I did call him a couple times just to make sure he was ok.

Tuesday we had the appointment with the pediatrician. We were up early and took the bus to get to the BVC (childrens’ clinic), on time. The kidlet was in fine form, chatting up a storm and extra friendly. We went in and I filled in the swedish paperwork with only one question, while the nurse weighed and measured the kidlet. He is now 15 kg (33 lbs) and 98 cm (3 feet 2 inches). From there we went in to see the doctor. She checked him very thoroughly but said she could not find anything to indicate the cause of his night coughing and snoring respirations that occur day and night when he is relaxed. She said it might be sinus related so sent off a referral to an ENT (ear nose and throat) specialist. She also wanted bloodwork and allergy testing to see if we were dealing with some sort of allergy.

So off we went to the lab. We took a number and the kidlet was excited because this time it was his turn (we were there a few months ago when I needed blood drawn). We went in and he sat on my lap and chatted with the lab tech while she applied the tourniquet and swabbed him. Then she put in the needle and he immediately yelled “nej … inte” and tears poured down his cheeks as he kept yelling “aiy yai” and nej. He never moved his arm though and when she was done he let her give him a hug. I was heartbroken and knew that we were in for more of the same.

We went back to the first nurse and waited for the allergy testing. Another woman came to do it and she explained it to him so well and he really didn’t want it done. He said it was mammas’ turn now. But I knew that it was not going to get better if I took him away and had to bring him back another day. So we went ahead and marked his little arm and the first nurse came and held it while I kept him secure in my lap. He giggled when she dropped on the little drops of liquid and said it was cold. But he was devastated again when she did the picking of those spots. We went to the waiting room and for the first 5 minutes he just held on to me and cried. Then he calmed enough to play some. He was not happy when we went back in but was visibly relieved when I told him that this time she would only look at his arm. He did not react to any of the allergens he was tested for.

From there we went and I dropped off my application for SFI. I really don’t want to go, but my fellow was disappointed I was giving up, so I am going back. Then we got on the bus and went to Eurostop for lunch at McDonalds. We called pappa and the kidlet kept handing me back the phone every time his dad said “fick du aiy yai?” (did you get an owie). He just did not want to talk about it. Poor little fellow. We shopped a bit and I got him the Powerpuff Girl soft doll he asked for before christmas. He talked to her all the way home on the bus.

The remainder of the week has been spent doing regular household chores, including laundry and trying to keep my fellow from going bonkers. He is not used to being housebound. He did see the doctor again on Thursday and was told to stay off work one more week and that it was
possibly a middle ear infection since his bloodwork did show an elevated white count. Yikes! Another week of him home and I may be the bonkers one. *laugh* Really he is not a pain at all, but it just throws my whole schedule off having him here all day.

This is a quick entry. I am unable to access livejournal from home and am currently ssh’d into a free shell account in order to check friends. This is the 4th day of being unable to reach livejournal from both my home computer or our server computer.

Anyway, lots has gone on here, my fellow is still ill, the kidlet was to the peadiatrician, had bloodwork and allergy testing and will now get an appointment with an ear/nose/throat specialist. I am fine but exhausted. This sick man at home thing is draining. *laugh*

Here it is Saturday already. It has been a quiet week.

My fellow is ill and we really have not done anything at all. On New Years Day he slept late and got up about 1:30 pm. He kind of staggered to the big chair and I thought he was just half asleep still. I made him a sandwich and poured him a coffee, then I took the dog out for a walk. When I came back my fellow was on the floor with the blanket he had brought with him from bed, spread over him. He said he was so dizzy he couldn’t sit up any longer and he was so lightheaded he couldn’t make it back to the bedroom. After a bit he did stagger back into bed. His blood pressure was a bit elevated and he was very nauseous, so I gave him half an anti-nausea pill. He slept most of the day and ate little. I made him tea and soup and that was about all he could manage. I was worried about work in the morning but he told me he had the rest of the week off.

Wednesday morning his work phoned and I told them he was too ill to come to the phone, so they gave me the message to pass along that the person replacing him had not shown up, so he was on call. I passed the message along, knowing he was not going to be answering any calls. He was still dizzy and lightheaded, although his blood pressure was back to normal. About 11:30 someone phoned for him from work. I said he was ill but the person on the other end kept telling me in swedish that it was work for him, so I switched my tactics and told him in swedish that my fellow was “mycket sjuk” and was not coming to the phone. That got the point across. By evening he was able to get up and sit for a short while.

Thursday morning he got up and phoned to make a doctors’ appointment. I have never seen him go to a doctor in the 5 years we have been together and he has been pretty ill in the past. So I knew he was feeling awfully bad. He talked to his dad and arranged for his dad to take him over to the doctor Friday morning. It was a better day and I felt comfortable leaving him alone for an hour while I took the kidlet out to play in the snow. We had great fun making snowballs and falling in the snow.

When he saw the doctor yesterday they did a battery of tests, ekg and lots of bloodwork. His blood pressure was elevated again and that caused the doctor some concern. He was told to stay home and stay quiet until he goes back to see the doctor next week. I am thinking he has labrynthitis and could do with some antivert, the nurse at the clinic said there is a virus going around that is producing similar symptons. So we will just wait it out. We did go for a short walk to the centrum in the late afternoon but by the time we got hime he was really dizzy again, so my “you need some fresh air” theory was a bust.

The kidlet went with farfar yesterday morning when he dropped off my fellow. They called later in the day asking if he could sleep there too and ran over to pick up pj’s and toothbrush. So my fellow went to bed about 10 pm and slept through to 1 pm today. He actually ate some real food for breakfast and kept it down and has been sitting up for the past few hours, with only the occasional bout of vertigo. So hopefully whatever is wrong is getting better.

Farmor brought the kidlet home this evening. They had been shopping and bought him two fleece lined sweaters, new pajamas and three pairs of wool socks. He came home sporting a lovely new sweater that his great uncle had brought for him from Egypt. He had a great 2 days with his grandparents and great uncle. He can now say Mandu (I have no idea how it is actually supposed to be spelled but that is how his name sounds to me *laugh*) He helped farmor clean and farfar shovel and sweep snow. He spent much time with Mandu as well. He tells me he had lots of fun. *smile* These times remind me why I agreed to move here. I wanted him to get to know and love his grandparents and he certainly does. He told me after I put him to bed that this place is mom and dad’s home, but his home is at farfars’. *laugh*

Last night after my fellow went to bed I finished filing all my photos from the
past 3 years, put half of my postcards into an album, scanned the most recent postcards and did the webpages for them. So now I have 50 pages of images from the postcards I have received since joining postcard_fun on livejournal here. I also transferred the images from christmas and new years onto the computer and edited the size. Tonight I will get those onto the server as well and share pictures of our holidays.

Well here it is 2002. This year I will hit the 2 year mark in Sweden. I agreed to come here for 2 years to try it. It feels as if this is where we will settle permanently, since it is really the best place for bringing up the kidlet multilingually and living here gives us the opportunity to travel to many different countries at affordable prices. I don’t know if I will be content with staying here but time will tell.

2001 had its’ good and bad points. We had many fun experiences, I now feel at home here in Sweden and can easily manage the buses and trains to get where I want to go. I made friends and got more comfortable with my fellows’ family. I can understand their swedish now when we get together and can read a book in swedish. Still can’t make swedish words come out of my mouth but I think them now. *laugh* I spent a month at home with my family in the spring. I got a part time job. The kidlet is talking now, has a terrific sense of humour and is just a bright light in every day of our lives. I found many special new friends on livejournal and have gotten to know old friends better from reading their daily musings. The bad parts were losing my Dad, Uncle Carl and Aunt Jane. Finding out that not everyone here is nice after a laundry room altercation with a neighbour. Homesickness to such a degree that I made myself a vow I will move home one day. I still can’t speak swedish and feel as if SFI is just a waste of time. Of course fitting into both the good and the bad category is the relationship with my fellow. He is sweet, caring, generous and loving as well as totally exasperating at times with his uncommunicative ways. But then I am far from perfect, I am loving, giving and thoughtful as well as moody, quick tempered and carry grudges to the nth degree. Of course this good and bad thing is the norm in any relationship. *smile* On the whole we are still happy, in love and will soon have been together 5 years.

We really have not done much at all since christmas. When we came home on boxing day, the apartment was clean except for general clutter in the living room. Two days later it looked like disaster had struck. So I have cleaned again, organized toys, boxed up a whole box of old ones to go to the cottage and am back to basic clutter again. I will deal with that today before we head over to my fellows’ parents again.

Funny (well in an exasperated sort of way) story. A while back the kidlet broke his fathers pocket watch. I was devastated because I had bought that for him as a symbol of our relationship, since we are not married and don’t have wedding rings. I took the watch to a jeweler here in town and he said it would need to be sent away since the kidlet had bent it so it would no longer close. He said it would take a week. 6 weeks and numerous visits to the store later, the owner told me there were only 3 watchmakers in Sweden who dealt with this type of watch and they were always busy, so it would be a while before we got it back and they would phone. Less than a week later, he called to say it was back and unrepairable. On christmas day I mentioned this incident to my fellows’ mom and she offered to take the watch with her to her parents and they could take it to Finland to see if it could be repaired there. She called here the day after she got to Haparanda and told us that she took the watch out and showed it to her dad, who looked at it, went and got a screw driver and fixed it in a couple of minutes. He has done much woodworking and has made numerous wall clocks and some grandfather clocks in the past, so he must have learned enough doing that to surpass the abilities of “one of the three in Sweden”. *laugh* I am thrilled the watch is fixed and my fellow can go back to wearing it.

So farmor is up north and yesterday farfar’s youngest brother arrived for a visit. He came from Egypt and it was a surprise to all when he called on the 24th to say he would be here on the 31st. None of farfars family has ever been to Sweden and farfar has lived here over 25 years. So the opinion was that the kidlet was the draw (although I reserve judgment on that). *laugh* According to farmor, the kidlet is special in that he is the first born and a son, in a long line of firstborn sons and each of them have their own first name and then carry a middle and last name that has passed down through the generations. My fellow has been to Egypt with his dad as well as with his family a few times. I hope one day we can take the kidlet there as well. Selfishly, because I have had a long time fascination with egyptian things and because it is another part of his heritage I want him to appreciate.

So yesterday farfar picked up his brother at the airport. We went over about 7 pm after picking up J & T in Upplands Väsby. I had made spinach dip and hot crab dip for snacking on. As usual I did a careful check of ingredients, since the bulk of the people there don’t eat meat and that includes things like soup mixes with a meat bouillon base. Uncle from Egypt looked tired, much like farfar, he is a very soft spoken, gentle man. My fellow hugged him hello, something surprising to me, since he is very undemonstrative outside of our home. It is very cold right now, it was -15 C when we were out watching fireworks last night and I am sure that is a shock for M. I don’t think it gets that cold in Egypt. *laugh* We ate and watched some tv and then ate some more. At about 11:45 pm we all bundled up and went out to shoot off fireworks and watch the huge display that ensues when everyone (literally) sets off their choices of fireworks to welcome the new year. The kidlet was so tired and cranky by then. We did make him have a nap and I would have liked to have put him down for a sleep there as well, but there was just too much excitement. So we all went out, watched the new year come in in -15C weather and then after a round of hugs, the kidlet and I went in to the warm again. We toasted the new year with champagne (my fellow and I) and everyone else toasted with fizzy non alcoholic beverages. We stayed until about 1 pm and then came home. Farfar wanted us to sleep over but we declined and agreed to go back today and visit more with M. I did get a couple of nice pictures and will put them up when I put up the christmas pictures.

I don’t know when my fellow goes back to work, probably tomorrow. I have a dozen postcards to mail out for and two parcels to send out as well. Farmor will be home on the 3rd and perhaps we shall fit in some shopping before she goes back to work on the 7th.