May 17th - Norway's Constitution Day

Had the greatest 17th of May ever this year. A few days before they were forecasting pouring rain for 3 straight days from May 16th through 18th, but day by day the forecast got better and by the time the 17th rolled around it was mainly sunny with the occasional shower.
Here in Østfold the cherries are blooming as are dandelions and violets. Lillies of the Valley are almost out.


Husband had to work, but the agility club was planning a training and grilling day - weather permitting. About 9 or 10 of us showed up to train. It was a such a nice way to celebrate. Not haveing to dress up. Lots of dogs and friendly people. They are such a nice crowd, my new agility friends. Lise brought her new puppy Oh Gosh! who is almost 8 weeks old and just the cutest thing. A couple brought a gass grill. Lucy and I had a good training session, a little too long but otherwise good. I'm following Lise's advice and giving cookies every 1-2 obstacles and her enthusiasm and focus have improved vastly.


Later in the afternoon husband and I were invited to our neighbors for hot dogs, cake and coffee, and we got to meet their Anne-Sofie's parents and brother as well. It was an enjoyable afternoon. Good to meet socially sometimes, though our lives have been too hectic for that to happen very often. Both Anne Sofie and I work rotating shifts, our husbands have the farm and training, and then there's their kids activities...

Slottstien (translation: castle path)

We talked about starting to explore some of the area when spring came. There is a large network of public footpaths and today we went on our first walk. Of course Husband has been exploring already during his running over large areas around our house. This walk was about a 15 minute drive away, to the highest point in Spydeberg township, which neighbors our township of Hobøl on the east. 

The path we took is called Slottsstien and starts from a chicken farm,  following the edge of the fields before it enters the forest and up the hill. You can read about "Slottsåsen" (Castle Hill) on Spydeberg's homepage: 


"Castle Hill's highest point is 232 meters above sea level. The fortress is about 50 meters south of the tower. The castle area is approx. 100 x 70 meters, and particularly to the south and west the remains of stone walls can be found well preserved. It is a common opinion that the hill castles derive from the Migration Period of ca. 1500 years ago, and served as "defenses" in  troubled times. However,  archaeological evidence is hard to find. There are several such primitive fortifications in the area. Castles were often placed in locations that had strategic importance and good views. The defense works usually consisted  of dry stone walls,  probably originally reinforced with palisades on the side with easiest access.

Approx. 250 meters south of Castle Hill is a "twin castle" on Høgås. It is located approx.20 meters lower, and you have to first climb down into the valley and up again on the other side to get there."

Dancer with Lucy and Topsy

The ruins of the castle walls

The lookout tower at the top of the hill. 

View toward Tomter

View toward Spydeberg

March

Love the view from our living room window, since they started pasturing the horse out there.

Husband has been putting together planting boxes for me. Therer is not enough earth over the bedrock to have a garden without them.

Meanwhile the kitties are still spending most of the day napping on the sofa.

Another spring job is sawing logs for next winters firewood.

While at the foot of the saw mill, the first coltsfoot are blooming.

Basking in the sun

We have had several lovely sunny days lately: mild, no wind. The ice is quickly melting away and being replaced with mud. Today I finally did what I have been longing to do: took out a garden chair and sat in the afternoon sun behind our cottage.

Above is Lucy posing in my sunning chair with the my tea cup (green chai with honey and milk) and the latest Vince Flynn, while below is the view from my chair.

I sat through 3 chapters and Lucy practiced lying quietly by my side, with occasional "cookies" to keep her motivated.

Could this be Spring?

Here is a picture from my dog walk around the farm a week ago. In the last few days the snow has all but disappeared. The ice beneath is following fast. It seems incredible that it should already be spring. It's only the end of February! The sun is shining, birds are singing their spring songs, but on examining the trees and bushes and searching the ground where it is green, I have been unable to detect swelling buds or flowers.

Valentines Day

So the other day I sat down to think: what would my life look like if I woke up one morning to find that I had the perfect life (this was an exercise in the introduction to a book my daughter recommended called "Change your Life in 7 Days" by Paul McKenna). I sometimes think that I would really prefer to be alone, to being in a relationship. However, when I really thought about it - in a perfect life I would not be alone. I would be married to a kind, generous, loving man.

Valentines day dinner at Sushi Asia. They had the most delicious lam and vegetable dinner!

Valentines present which I found on my desk when I got up. Husband had to work and had gotten up at 5 am leaving me to sleep in. I have always wanted a set of natural skin care products, and these are travel sized. Just the thing for when we travel to America later this spring.

I gave husband a gift card for 12 deserts, to be made by me within the next year. To be honest, I needed an excuse to try out some recipes for desserts without sugar that I found in the "broccoli forrest" cookbook. I immediatly got busy and made the first one: an apple, cheese, port pie with an almond crust. But I cheated and used home-made currant juice instead of port - so it had some sugar in it after all.

Norwegian Mothers Day

Today is the Norwegian mother's day, and I am feeling a little bereft: After having a full house for the most part of 2 weeks, with both Tormod and the girls visiting, the house feels empty now, and I am missing them terribly. However I do have an upcoming visit from Audun and Annina to look forward to in a couple of weeks. Hurray!

All bundled up for a walk with the dogs.

Irene was exhausted when she first arrived.

Ingvild taking care of a little personal hygiene.

Tormod checking his email at my desk.

Knut's Funeral

Today I went to the funeral of someone with whom I spent 12 years of my life: the father of my children. I drove 2,5 hours from our place in the woods of Østfold, south of Oslo northwards to a small church overlooking the Randsfjorden lake. It was a sunny day, crispy cold. Mist rising up off the lake. A small intimate little church, the surrounding gravestones peaking up from the snow. The priest, an round, bald, fatherly man, gave a kind of informal warmth to the service.

Sitting there in the pew I thought of the good things this person had brought into my life, of things we had shared, and lessons I had learned through living with him. The farm up near the arctic circle which we farmed for 6 years. Our travels to England and the US, visiting cultural sites in England, and exploring state and national parks in the US. Reading The Philosophy of Freedom, together. He taught me to ski. Commitment to the truth, and the importance of Keeping Agreements. And the greatest gifts: 4 lovely children, now young adults.

Rest in Peace!

bike trainer

Finally got my "*" in gear and started working out on Husbands bike trainer. He got it all set up for me and nagged at me until I changed into workout clothes. The trainer is set up in the attic guest room, which is a nice cold room - ideal for training (no worries future guests, we have an electric panel heater there).

Emergency in the psych unit

I've been wanting to blog about New Years Resolutions, past and present and it says much about the state of affairs that it is 2 1/2 weeks into January and I haven't yet done so. One of the present ones is to start working out. I haven't worked out in 6 months, not since we returned from vacation, decided to move, decided to sell the house and cancelled our membership at the gym. My aim is to build up slowly: first pilates for minimum 15 minutes 3X a week and add on from there.

Yesterday I found a new motivation to start some cardio workout. The ruscusitation alarm went off in the ER and the designated rescusitation nurse looked at his beeper and asked someone to come along. I had time so I volunteered. The emergency was in the psych. ward. My colleague shouldered the backpack with the defibrillator, I grabbed the clipboard and the oxygen canister and we took off running. The psych unit is a long hike away from the ER. Our path took us through the ER, down 2 floors to the basement, along half the basement corridor, and into the culvert, an underground passage that connects the main hospital with the patient hotell on one hand and the building that houses psych on the other. Once there we had to run up a flight of stairs again to the locked door of psych. My colleague is an athlete. Only one of the physicians on the team who had a kick bike was able to keep up with him, the other two and myself were definitly dropping behind. I was winded when we arrived, and thought: I really need to start working out!

It all went well. As the psych personell unlocked for us, my colleague asked: is it an arrest (cardiac)? No was the answer, and we knew we could slow down. I never found out what had happened, but the patient was sitting on the floor and anesthesia, who had gotten there before us were already working on him. The attending medical doctor stayed with the anesthesia nurse, the rest of us were dismissed.

New Doctor, Old Problems

The old problems are relating to that time of life called "overgangsalder" in Norwegian which roughly translates to "age of transition". To deal with these I was put on a 3 month regimen of HRT (hormone replacement therapy). This caused my emotiotional life to become like riding a roller coaster (and I don't like roller coasters!). Stuff that I am usually able to take in stride either sends me into a rage where I have been known to throw broccoli or dishtowels at husband or despair, where I cry for hours. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by black depression, it is as if I am looking at the world through a black veil. The only way to keep my self in hand is escape: listening to an audio book for example. It helps me, but is no more helpful to husband as I become unavailable, with my attention focused on the story. Audio books do have the advantage that I can do some work while listening, as opposed to reading, which is just as effective an escape, only I get nothing done. The last time I was on the roller coaster I recieved the following application from husband:

(Norwegian speakers can click on the picture to enlarge it, for non-norwegian speakers and english translation follows):

Application for good mood.

Dear you

Would be very happy if you were in a little bit better mood tomorrow, because then life would be so much easier to live for both of us. It is very tiring all the time to have to look back over my shoulders to check that that there is no flying broccoli etc coming after me.

Smile to the world and it will smile to you.

hugs from your husband who is nervous about flying broccoli.

(posted with permission from husband)

The new doctor, though trained as an MD, also practices homeopathy and natural medicine. He has given me a number of homeopathic drops and powders. So here's to a more natural "Age of Transition"!

Exploring

Sule bridge, a part of the ancient Kings Highway. It is about a half hours walk from the farm. A nice place to sit and look out over the farms and fields, and the Hobøl river meandering through them.

Sule bridge rest house. It is up the hill from the bridge, just where the track from the farm emerges from the woods. A museum, it is closed for the winter.

Mjuke bridge over a tributary to the Hobøl river. A stone bridge from 1800.

Dog meets Dog

There is already a dog at Holden Farm, a little danish/swedish farmdog, very territorial. How all the dogs would get along has been our biggest (our only, actually) worry. On our first day here, I met Anne Sofie in the wood shed, and she shared some concern regarding the dogs. Apparently Kaisa had been bitten by a visiting dog a couple of years ago, and has had a tendency to react aggressively towards strange dogs sinced then, especially on her own turf. Topsy has never really gotten along with other dogs, though she usually will avvoid them. Lucy takes her cue from Topsy, and tends to be aggressive, especially when Topsy is around, so I had planned to seperate them for their encounters with Kaisa. This however was not to be.

They first met a couple days after we moved in. I had just opened the door to take the dogs for their walk when Kaisa ran right up to the front step. As a chorus of defensive snarling errupted, I scooped Lucy up in my arms, pulled Topsy back inside and shut the door.

The second meeting came the day after we returned from Folldal. Husband was walking the dogs, and as he passed the barn, Kaisa came barrelling out of nowhere and went straight at Topsy's throat, which immediately resulted in an all out dog fight between the three of them. Kaisa doesn't wear a collar, but eventually the kids were able to collect her, while husband got a leash on Topsy. Lucy was already on leash.

The third meeting occurred today. I was returning from our walk when I saw that Kaisa was outside by the barn. I clipped the leash on Topsy, but let her drag it and we walked slowly by making a show of avvoiding the barn. Kaisa followed hugging the barn walls. However as we started up the driveway, Kaisa following a ways behind, Topsy started growling and wanting to hang back. I took her leash and while continuing to feed Lucy to keep her attention on me as I had ever since we saw Kaisa, we made our way to the house. Kaisa just went to her own house and sat down on the front step. It looks like, with a little encouragement from us, the dogs can be prevailed upon to avvoid each other. They seem to have started to understand that Kaisa has her house, our dogs have theirs, and thet the yard is more or less divided between them. The area around the barn will likely be the biggest bone of contention.

New Years Eve in the ER

Over the new years weekend I had 3 night shifts. My first time working from the new house. I am driving now, instead of taking the train, and taking a winding country road that skirts Oslo, instead of the highway that goes right through it. I figure the country road, while taking longer, will be more predictable, as I don't have to worry about rush hour or tunnels being closed due to accidents.

At one point somebody said: "it's Midnight!" and we all trooped out side, nurses and physicians alike to stand on the ambulance ramp and watch the fireworks. People were hugging each other and texting their family. The mood was happy and expectant. We had all brought something for a potluck which we set out after the fireworks. There was turkey and salmon, waldorf salad, swedish meatballs, lunch meats, scrambled eggs, bread and homemade lefse. It was quite a feast!

It was a fairly predictable night for New Years Eve. In the beginning it was mostly fireworks injuries. Seems there were some defective sparklers out there, and we got 3 cases of 3rd degree burns in the hands from sparklers that had ignited and burned right down to the hand in a flash. Later it was the intoxications. They started pouring in at 2:30 am. At one point we had several John Does, all unresponsive, as well as what seemed like most of the Romerike police department trying to contain the patients that were conscious.

It had started snowing at midnight and continued snowing heavily all night, so I thought it probably would be best to take the highway through Oslo home. Early New Years Day I didn't expect much trafikk, and it would surely be well plowed and salted. Boy was I mistaken. Shortly after I got onto the highway, I ran into a convoy of 4 snowplows driving abreast, with quite a lot of traffic behind them. In spite of their efforts the road was covered with a layer of icy mush, very unpleasant to drive in, especially in heavy traffic. Also the convoy was only moving at 30 - 40 km/h. When I saw the sign warning of the upcoming toll booths I thought: "forget this! I'm not paying to drive at 35 km/h in this mush, when I can drive the country road just as slowly and with less traffic for free!" So I got off at the next exit and went back to where I had got on. The country road had proper winter conditions (snow, not slush), practically no traffic at all - I think I met all of 2 cars - and once I got into Østfold it was even properly plowed. I was able to drive at pretty much normal speeds all the way home.

Our New Home

The mailboxes at the end of the driveway, with the barn and the silo's behind. The sign says "Holden" which is the name of the farm.

The birch lined driveway. At the top you can see the barn on the right, the woodshed/toolshed/shop straight ahead, and on the left our house (behind the reddish bush) and the farm house behind that again.

Our little house is 300 years old, and used to be the bake and brew house on the farm.

Looking right from where Topsy sat on the front step you see the barn: a loafing barn for 45 milk cows + calves, bulls and heifers. The milking is done by a Delaval milking robot.

Looking left from the front step you see first the Stabbur, or storehouse.

After the storehouse comes the machine shed and then the Forge, which we are using as a place to store garden tools, bicycles etc.

Our house seen from the Forge.

Also seen from the forge, the main farmhouse which is actually directly across from our house, maybe 30 yards from front door to front door.