Sunday Afternoons at my House ...

An EXCEPTIONALLY wonderful Sunday afternoon with Jessie. Started out with a few necessary 'beauty' treatments, then on to dinner that Dad had cooked, next Disney.com on my laptop - set up next to my desk on a small table ... Two gals just surfin the web .... all the while chatting and having a delightful time.

We start getting ready for her to go back to her Group Home since she likes to throw fits about leaving ... even though she ADORES the place, her Day Hab and her friends. It is just something she does (and SO, SO hard ....).

Got her goody bag packed, the Group Home aide came to get her (this had stopped her fits, she will happily skip off to THEIR CAR ...) hugs all round and the door closes.

I breathe a sigh of relief to have dodged "The Monster Tantrum" yet another week. They really bother me and the sadness, frustration and depression that is generated by them seems to stick to me like a second skin that only time will eventually slough off ...

Minutes later we hear her very, very loud high pitched banshee wail coming from the vicinity of the aides car. I want to run and hide in my closet ... anywhere, where I don't have to hear the "I don't want to go back"s, the manipulative crying ... 10 volumes too loud, but I open the door and step outside - determined to not let her in the house. That's one point for me ... one thing she will not win just by screaming at the top of her lungs.

She is strong and trying to barrel past me, the aide standing there wondering what to do. Her kind, brown, gentle eyes are wide and frightened ... she has never seen Jessie act in any way but happy and bursting with enthusiasm and joy .... she clearly does not recognize this young woman in front of her - pushing, and screaming, and hitting - this is a private show - for parents only ...

And it is most definitely a "show" she can turn it off whenever she feels like it. Happens all the time. If I weren't in the process of rejoicing that the ordeal is over, I would probably be much more angry about how she does it so easily ...

Gary arrives just in time to help me with the "not going back in the house" stance. She moves on to " Act 2" sitting on the ground, removing her shoes and kicking me if I get too close.

Our mode of operation during these 'tantrums' is to calmly talk to her - ask her questions "Why don't you want to go back?" She doesn't know. "Why are you acting like this?" She doesn't know. The screaming follows a wave pattern - at it's lowest, neighbors a block away can hear her ... At its highest - those same neighbors can hear her from inside their house, windows closed, air running and a football game on the Telly ... up loud.

It's running a typical course, the logical part of my brain saying "Just ride it out" while the "Mother" part of my brain ... that part with a direct, non-stop path to the heart ... is off in a dark corner somewhere weeping quietly ...

Things apparently are not going in a manner that would most keep her amused, so she decides to head on to "Act 3" - a very common act ...during the last months she lived at home you could count on this skit played out almost daily ... sometime with multiple encores ....

I see it in her eyes a second too late. I involuntarily yelp out "Jess!" the WORST thing I can do ... react. In fact, this is how she has perfected her show - by seeing what gets the biggest reaction ...

We try not to react at all, but much easier as a theory of "How not to hand your daughter ammunition to break your heart, freak you out, make your blood boil in anger, etc, etc, etc" than it is to accomplish in actual reality ...

She balls her fist and hits herself in the nose as hard as she can. My hand and lung mere milliseconds too late. She has won this round ... but not entirely. True ... she now has blood POURING from her nose, and true ... she is letting it drip from her face onto her hands and arms and clothes and the ground. But the ground in this episode happens to be the front porch, not the light cream colored carpet inside that she loved to defile ....

A small victory, but you haven't lived until you get to ... daily ... clean hundreds of blood drops from your carpet ... And in later years - wipe down the walls after she discovers the joys of finger painting and discovers what happens if you get close to the wall and just blow out, hard, of your nose ...

(just an inappropriate side note: the blood? SO MUCH NICER than during the stint where we tried to get her to sleep in her own room and locked the door from the outside - giving her MULTIPLE times where we got her a drink, she used the toilet, etc. But every night the screaming continued ... and every night, be it one, two, three or four hours since we had put her down for the night - she decided it would be fun to fingerpaint the walls, herself, the carpet, her bed ... with her feces.

Every.

Single.

Night.

Discovered our breaking point was 3 months ... gave up trying ...

My motto?

Since around 1988?

"It can always be worse ...".

See?

Now the blood doesn't sound all that bad, does it?)

But as for her latest trick - the blood flowed freely and often ... If you, for fun, decided to Luminol our house? You would have me down at the "Station" in Interrogation asking me where I hid the body ....

Her arms are dripping blood, half her face is covered. The pretty dress she was wearing was beginning to look like a crime scene photo. I sigh and go inside for a washcloth. Old, familiar territory.

The logical part of my brain is starting to panic. I call the woman in charge of the group home ... Jessie ADORES her. She talks to Jess, she tells me she is coming to pick her up herself ... we hang up. I small ray of hope enters my psyche - Jessie loves Iffy, she will go with her, no question about it.


The Group Home aide leaves.


Gary says he will take Jess to the backyard and wait with her until Iffy arrives, cleans her up a bit.


I return inside. When Jessie is like this - I seem to fan the flames and make everything worse, so usually my actual self can be found approximately in the same type of spot as my "Mother" brain .... hiding in a remote corner ... trying to keep that 'weeping' part bottled up ... Generally depends on the day whether or not I succeed.

As I am standing in the office looking at my computer monitors, but not really seeing them ... overwhelmed yet again by my emotions. I marvel that it really, truly - after hundreds of 'productions' - NEVER, EVER stops feeling as if someone has drop-kicked me ... then ripped my heart to shreds just for good measure.


There is no hardening here ... no "getting used to" not even a smidgen of 'learning to cope' ... just me


Staring at nothing ....


Shaking. ...


Thoughts all a jumble ...


Tears dripping from my chin ...


Heart in tatters ...


Wondering -


How long?


How long this time?


How long will it take to put all my pieces back together again?



And as I wonder how long, this time, will it be before I gain some sense of emotional control, I hear Gary and Jessie laughing in the backyard ...

Finally! My Final Day in Norway ...

Gary and I had one day to drive around and go visit whatever we wanted on Thursday after a quick meeting Gary had - so we made sure to make wise choices on where we wanted to go.

First stop, of course was 'My Mountain' - where our house was. We wanted to see the house but also - the ski jump - Holmenkollen Ski Jump - that we drove by every time we came off the mountain had since been torn down and a new one put up. It was not within code and they wanted to be able to host international ski jump competitions - so Oslo was building something new and up to code. We wanted to see if 'we approved'.

The old ski jump on a beautiful day when I was above the clouds that covered Oslo Fjord:


And the new ski jump:


We decided that we approved ...



Drove by Holmenkollen Hotel - our home for the last week we lived in Norway while we supervised the packing and move out of the house:


Tried to find that 'perfect spot' to take a photo of the ski jump. I think this is it. Gary thinks not since he did not remember a fence - but there was a fence on both sides of the road that looked new. I am sure we will never know ...


A quick photo of the church next to the ski jump. I cannot remember the name and Google is being a butt right now and not letting me see a map of the area so I can find the name. It is where all the royals are baptized and such ... (OK - Google is back and it is surprisingly called "Holmenkollen Chapel")


We drove by the house, but it was high enough that it was in the clouds - thus no great photos. We were also chickens and didn't go knock on the door and see if Hans lived there or if he had rented it out again. His plan was to move back in and it would have been good to see him - but ... chickens ...



Then off to Holmenkollen Restaurant since it has a bitchin' view of the Oslo Fjord. This sculpture of a speed skater is new since we lived there - I like her:


And the beautiful Oslo Fjord:


The sun does not get very high in the winter - just skims the hills - but it is beautiful in its own way ...


Sigh ... I LOVE this view ...


I looked down from the deck I was standing on to see THE CUTEST LITTLE ROUND HOUSE EVER!!! I sort of remember that something yellow was down there, but had never really looked - isn't it ADORABLE?


One final photo, a quiet goodbye, and back to the car ...


And on to Bærums Verk!!! My favorite place to shop - all hand made crafts made the old fashioned way in an old iron works factory (I think ... I have forgotten SO MUCH ...)


There are a ton of statues and sculptures there - this one is new. It is concave but seems to look convex:


Beautiful river flowing through it. Can you see the (new) blue scuba divers?


And a shot of the inside of my FAVORITE STORE!!! They sold hand made wooden containers called Tine's and I was addicted to buying them - they are all over my house now holding treasures of all sorts ...


One of the cute buildings on the complex (sold chocolate if I remember right ...)


Then on the road again and on our way to our final destination: THE NORTH POLE! Yes, we were heading to where Jule Nissen (Santa) lives. A total town dedicated to Christmas. You know you are in Drøbak when you see the yeild sign with the silhouette of Santa and his bag running across the road ... (you can see the yeild sign in the very next to last photo hanging on the cash register).

On our way - the sun began to set - it was 3:00 in the afternoon. If there is one thing that Norway knows how to do - and do well - is paint a beautiful sunset:




So by the time we hit Drøbak it was dark. I spent some time with my tripod taking HDR photos while Gary looked through the stores. This is the cutest little church just outside of the town square:


I saw this cool tree and decided it needed photos also:


And then a shot of the town center:


Then into the main store (the one where you can mail your letters to Santa:






An old fashioned cash register that I really liked and the 'Santa 'Watch out For' Sign':


I was beyond pooped (aka sick) and so Gary gallantly went to get the car while I waited on the porch of the main Christmas store. It was quiet, and peaceful, and beautifully lit. I had a minute or two to reflect that this was it, my final moments in Norway. We would be getting up in the morning and heading to the airport in the dark (of course) and a feeling of sadness washed over me.

Would I ever be back? Was it enough? Why was I so in love with this country? I don't have any of the answers to those questions ...




.... maybe in another chapter of my life I will figure them all out








.... or maybe not ...

Karl Johan's Gate ... in the daytime!

I know that it has been almost forever since I was in Norway, but the holidays got in the way, then when I went to pick out what files I wanted to show y'all - there were 124 - which isn't so bad if some good music is playing and you are mindlessly downloading them to your blog. Can be done in no time at all ...

But, if you happen to be psychotic, have a severe case of OCD and want to show details in what you are displaying on the blog (mainly because the details are why I picked that particular photo in the first place ...) it involves no less than Photoshop editing, 3 plug ins and a wee bit of time. Plus a TON OF PATIENCE. Which I, of course, don't have. I would edit a few some days and just sit there and say to myself that if I had to edit one more ... I would put my fist through one of my very pretty monitors ... so I would (surprising, no?) stop.

Some days I got quite a few done and was having so much fun, I would take an hour on one photo! No good for a blog and a ton of photos - but ever so much fun for me. Those days I didn't stop ... well - until I decided that if I didn't get up and walk around - I might be crawling to my bed ...

There seemed to be no happy medium. Some days I liked using the 'Bleach Bypass' process to pull out the details - makes things look a wee bit like an overblown HDR photo - but shows detail. I used it more than I ought to have and would try to reduce the impact by lowering the opacity of the bleached processed layer - but you can still tell that this month I am infatuated with it.

One of the plug ins has a way of pulling out the detail also - and at high levels, it starts to look the same as a bleach bypass photo - so lots of funky photos this time around - they just look a bit ... off. But - if you look closely - you will find that you can ... look closely! That all the little tiny details of something are all right there just waiting for you to explore them!

OK, enough about the photos - I will pretty much just dump them on the screen and try to keep the nattering down to a minimum.

This first one (I will mention) is the first view of Oslo Cathedral we get as we walked from the Radisson to its location (I say we - since Gary and I walked the same path the night before - I was alone during this photo taking session. There are simply a TON of wires in the sky, along the buildings - part of a trolly system (? I can't remember) or just there to annoy photographers? This photo I tried taking all the wires out since it looks just divine without them - but since it took me hours and there were over 30 wires in this one photo alone - I told myself that y'all were going to have to see the wires and I had to stop wasting time taking them out - so most of the rest of the photos have wires in them unless they were quick to get rid of or bugging me more than usual ...


Beautiful arches into what look like stores in the annex portions of what looks like the Cathedral.


Two beautiful statues above the main door into the chapel - and the door:




Various views of the Cathedral as I walked around it and on to my destination:






One word:


CHICKENS!!!




SERIOUSLY?



WHY, WHY, OH WHY would you make a

STATUE OF CHICKENS???


It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma and all hard boiled ...



A photo that seemed to have wandered out of place ... I thought that I had them all in order. This, as we have mentioned before in earlier posts, is Stortinget - Norway's beautiful parliament building.


AND THIS - is the entry to "Oslo Sweater Shop". Yeah, beautiful, knit woolen Norwegian sweaters.

Let's just say that they really, really liked me there ...

Oh, and it is way before Stortinget - after the Cathedral, but on the way to Stortinget - thus the reason I said Stortinget is lost ... (Cute troll, yes? We have grundles of them at home and LOVE them! Though, ours are a wee bit smaller ...)


You know that part about me shutting up? It WILL HAPPEN - soon I think ...

THIS LOVELY LADY is MAGICAL. I took (no kidding) about 10 photos of her. With my big, sophisticated camera. Each time, I used the auto-focus and each time a tiny red light showed up on the screen - HITTING SOME PORTION OF HER - not the wall, not the sky, not the street - and beeped saying it was in focus. And so each time I snapped a photo. Got back and downloaded my photos AND NOT A SINGLE ONE WAS IN FOCUS. That is a very cool trick ... well, FOR HER, not so much for me. She was an absolutely breath taking sculpture attached to a wall and I really liked her. And I had no time to go back in the light and shoot her again.

So - I did basically the only thing you can do with an out of focus photo - posterized it to make it useable as a bit of 'abstract art' that is fooling no one. Just wanted you to see her.

Still wondering how she did that ...





I have included a lot of details that I find on the buildings. I could probably tell you which building it came from and the building probably has a name - but I don't care enough right now (I want to go lay down) to figure that all out for you - so I hope you can enjoy them anonymously ...




Apotek - A version of the word apothecary (I think) - which in Europe seemed to be the word for Pharmacy - in some sort of spelling of the word - everywhere we went ...










Stortinget IN ORDER (of appearance while I was walking):


And MY FAVORITE building along the walk - I think it is rather beautiful: (lots of photos of it to follow):






A Candle holder. Used everywhere and usually not three feet high like this one. I used them, I HAVE them. Sadly they are shoved in a closet somewhere ....


so pretty ...


"Time For Aftenposten" - the newspaper that I still read sporadically ...




And my second favorite building. This one just boggles my mind that they could add all that work to a building .... what? Just to make it pretty? I am no expert in architecture, but this seems rather inefficient ...

and very thankful for those that deem this beauty more important than efficiency!







Seriously my FAVORITE DUDE on the street (less one - but he can't be called a 'dude') there are a TON of these on the front of the building (you can see them in other photos) ... what are they? The welcoming committee?







Seriously creepy looking statue - only because his eyes look like they have been poked out ...








The ever present gaggle of children. I tend to not take photos of them, because I don't want to alarm the adults that I am taking photos of children - and have had some (humorous) run ins while doing so - so I took one from far away (this being at minimum the 10th group I had passed on my walk - and this is not a 'special' day - you will see this many children's school classes out and about every day). The children in Norway are taught school in a very different manner than the children in the States. They truly believe that every minute sitting at a desk is one more minute the children are NOT learning. They teach by doing, by seeing, by going places and learning about things. They have recess - just sheer play time for at least 3 hours of their day. It was interesting to learn about the school system in Norway - Jessie attended a special education Norwegian school and the teachers there loved to tell me the differences between our schools and theirs and why theirs were so superior ...

looked kinda fun ...





One of our favorite sights as a family when walking around downtown ...





Pretty, pretty lady ...


I cannot BEGIN to tell you how much fun I had with this 'fellow'!!


I kept TELLING HIM, AND TELLING HIM while taking his photo that

"THERE IS NOTHING OVER THERE, REALLY"

and

"I REALLY THINK YOU SHOULD CALM DOWN ... NOTHING THERE (in singsongy voice)"

I am unsure how the Norwegians took to me speaking with him, but he, well - seems so ...


ALARMED


I felt he needed a good talking to ...


Was impressed as I started looking closer at this building (belonging to "Pretty Lady" and "Freaked Out Guy" also) that each of the decorations were different, not just duplicates:





And,

NO


this guy WAS NOT TO THE LEFT OF "FREAKED OUT GUY" ...




In the winter, Norwegians hang out these bundles of straw for the birds to eat the seeds. I thought it was quaint and pretty and I was surprised when we drove up to our old house to see one tied on the entrance onto the property. Not surprised that it was odd that it was there - but it surprised me that we went through two winters there and not once did I think to buy one and hang it anywhere ... I must not have any Norwegian in me.

BUT!

I did have my bird feeder and rather enjoyed the birds COMING TO ME and letting me watch their antics as they ate birdseed outside my desk window ...



A Festival of sorts was set up around what in the summer is a big pond with fountains and in the winter is an ice skating rink.

Be VERY PROUD of me ...


I did not buy anything ...


Here are some of the lovely Nordic sweaters that I loved so much ...



While these fellows look like they are enjoying themselves in the summer - I worry about them freezing off their little naked butts in the winter ...



Again with the freezing naked butts ... (I don't mind the naked - been in Europe too many times and too long for naked to bother me - but the FREEZING ... BRRRRR)



Note the arrow pointing to the water - I GOT THAT CLOSE to the fjord and the Harbour - but my feet were getting sore ...







I know it might come as a shock after reading the big name on the building - but this is the National Theatre ...


















See that taxi down there? I was all taking photos of these three matching buildings (I forget what they are - thus the lack of labels above), with the Palace right to my left and the National Theatre behind me and I was all ...

"Turn around and walk to the Harbour? Take more photos?"

or ...

"The Taxi?"


"Turn around and walk to the Harbour? More photos?"


or ...


"The Taxi?"



"The Harbour? More photos?"


or ...


"The Taxi?"




"The Harbour?"


or ...


"The Taxi?"


And as you can see by the imminent end to this post which one won out!!!




Walked into my hotel room to the prettiest light coming in the window ...


Because of this! It lasted for about 5 minutes ...


Five full minutes of sunshine!!!



Well, I am not promising when my last day of photos from Norway will be posted. Every time I make a promise - "The Fates" intervene and it takes at least 4 times as long as had I not made the promise in the first place (it is my theory ....)



So ...




Later ...