One Way Ticket...

In four weeks' time, we are off on a skiing holiday to La Plagne in the French Alps.

I know, I know...I lead a charmed life of sabbatical decadence. I do.

But today I'm not in the mood to appreciate. And if you read on, perhaps you'll see why:

La Plagne is 2 hours by car from the nearest airport of Chambery. Considering Benjamin's rather severe motion sickness, a 2 hour drive on small, mountainous roads is not perfect (perfect would be ski-in/ski-out privileges from our house here in Norway). But it beats a 3-4 hour car ride, which was our alternative.

In addition, the airport of Chambery offers a direct flight to/from Oslo, Norway. Again, better than many of our other options, which require stopovers in Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Paris or even London.

Whenever we book flights, our primary concern is cutting down on travel time. Benjamin tolerates a couple of hours reasonably well, but he seems to hit a wall at the 2 hour mark, and after that things go downhill quickly. As in lots and lots of being sick. It's messy, stressful and, most of all, terribly unpleasant for him.

That's why we thought La Plagne was a good choice for skiing. Our flight from Oslo leaves at 8:30 am, and we get into Chambery three hours later. Two hours on the road, and we might even make it to the hotel for lunch. Benjamin has the afternoon to recover before hitting the slopes the next day. We have time to buy our lift tickets, book ski lessons/ski school, and even enjoy a nice dinner. French food. Yum.

So imagine my mood when, two months ago, an email dumps into my inbox, with big, bold, ominous letters:

"Time Change to your Flight"

A quick glance through the "We are sorry, blah, blah, blah...inconvenience...yeah, yeah, yeah...change to departure time."

Scroll further down...to see that they have pushed our departure time back by 10 hours! What?? We are now leaving Oslo at 6:30 pm. Look, I can handle an hour or two, but 10 hours is an entire day lost!

I immediately went onto their website, and I searched through other airlines' websites for hours. Only to confirm what I already knew. This is the only airline that offers a direct connection to Chambery from Oslo, and this is their only depature a week. There's no alternative, no choice. Not unless we are willing to do stopovers.

So we changed everything. Booked another car to pick us up in C'hambery. There'll be no getting in mid-day now, we'll be lucky to get in the right side of midnight. This sucks big time. The kids will be totally groggy and cranky the next morning, when the ski school starts.

But what sucks even more is that the return flight has also been pushed back 10 hours. We are now leaving Chambery at close to 10 pm.

Given how hotels usually ask you to clear out of your room before noon, we will have the entire day to do nothing. Sure we can, and probably will, ski. Because who doesn't love changing out of your wet and yucky ski clothes in the public bathroom off the lobby in a cramped ski hotel? With kids? Fun times!

At the end of that fun day, we'll arrive in Oslo at 30 minutes past midnight. And you know the privilege of clearing snow off a car that's been parked in the outdoor parking lot for a week? Well, imagine doing it at 1 am with two children in tow?

That's almost as great as having to drive another 1.5 hours home afterwards. Woo-hoo!

But since we are still looking at 5 hours of travel time - just at nasty, nasty hours - there's no point in changing anything. And we may even luck out and the boys will sleep on the flight home. Benjamin can't get sick when he's sleeping, so who knows? A silver lining?

So these last few weeks I've been trying to get into the mood again. Working my way back to looking forward to this trip. It's going to cost us a fortune, and I want to enjoy it.

Until I saw this in my inbox last week:

"Flightnumber Change"

It actually took me a few minutes to work up the courage to open it, and when I did, at first I couldn't see any changes:

1730 from OSL to CMF 2115
2155 from CMF to OSL 0135

But then it dawned on me. They added another hour to the flying time. We are now leaving Oslo an hour earlier, but still arriving at the same time.

Did France move without telling me?

I threw myself on phone to customer service.

[Wait, wait, wait.]

Finally, a human voice. "Ma'am, you are travelling during peak hours of the day, when the air space is full, so we've essentially had to add extra time to just circle."

Hmm...I really don't understand that little dinky Chambery airport can be that busy. Heck, I couldn't even find another flight in. And Oslo Airport is not busy at 1:30 am, I can promise you that. But she insisted.

Fine! Maybe she can sit next to Benjamin as we circle the airport for the 57th time.

The bottom line is that we've now added another hour onto our travel time. Two more vomits, by my count. Not to mention the fact that we'll be arriving back in Oslo at 1:30 am, and at our house no earlier than 4 am. So there's Sunday gone, too.

Back to getting into the mood. It's going to be fun. Fun. FUN! I.Am.Going.To.Love.It. Forget about the travel time. Who cares?

[Phone rings this morning at 9 am]

...an hour has been added to the flight time to allow for a stopover in Gothenburg, Sweden. We are sorry.

I.Hate.Air.Travel.

It MOCKS me

You know the word verification thingy all you 'portant bloggers have activated? It. Hates. Me. And the feeling is mutual. Here's how our relationship works:

I punch in my supportive/cheerful/sympathetic/sarcastic comment and press 'Send'.

Immediately little miss Word Verification answers back, quite snippily, with intimidating red letters:

Enter the letters as they are shown in the image.

She even uses a bossy little Warning triangle! Sort of like a veiled threat. Only not veiled. More like an in-your-face 'be afraid...be veeeeeeery afraid' threat. A 'you-are-going-to-lose-your-entire-comment-if-you-don't-do-as-I-say' dare.

Fine. So I look at the stupid letters. But they're in a cursive I have never, ever seen before, unless it's the type that my oldest son tries to pass off as cursive (meaning little miss Word Verification is not just rude but also a lazy bum). I can't tell for sure what's a 'v' and what's a 'w'. Lazy, mean bum.

I punch in the letters while muttering 'what a pain in the butt' under my breath.

Press 'Send'.

What?!

She's back. And this time, I swear the message is bigger, bolder and redder:

Enter the letters as they are shown in the image.

The triangle is larger, too, and more ominous. Like the exclamation mark is ready to jump out of the screen and in my face.

She's got new letters up there now. Fewer this time, and slightly easier to read. It's like she's mocking me. She's clearly thinking I'm so stupid, I need the idiot version. She's trying to make it easy for hopeless little me. The nerve! I'll show her!

Punch, punch, punch... 'Send'

Wait...wait...what?!

Third attempt Word Verification reads as follows: BENDOVR

Sorry.No.Comment.For.You.

The Power Of A Comment

I now know that bloggers lie! Or, at the very least, stretch the truth. Because our pumpkins were not *that* amazing. Not 32 comments worth of amazing (that's right 32! Woo-hoo)!

Whatever.

I'm not giving any of my precious comments back, but I might print and hand them out to trick-or-treaters tomorrow. As proof that our pumpkins are certifiably fabulous, if, for some confounded reason, people don't swoon right away.

The truth is, your generous compliments may have saved a life, because what I neglected to mention about the weekend was that it rained and rained and rained some more.

It was the coldest and wettest weekend yet, and the fog lay as an impenetrably thick and damp blanket over the entire neighbourhood. It was m.i.s.e.r.a.b.l.e. Which is why, apart from the now fabled garage pumpkin carving session, the kids were inside the house.

The. Whole. Weekend.

And getting more antsy, irritable, whiny and difficult by the hour.

[I seem to recall a wise blogger who once suggested mandatory schooling on rainy weekends. Did I miss sign-up?]

My patience was wearing razor-thin, and I don't dare think what might have happened if I hadn't had the blogosphere to escape into every now and then.

Monday morning, relieved to know that we'd made it through almost unscathed, I even considered bringing out the flag to wave my children to school: "So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye."

With the boys finally out of the house, Mike and I are back to doing what we do best [get your mind out of the gutter, please!] , which is fantasize about exotic locales we might be able to squeeze into our European tour. Some decidedly un-European destinations have been thrown into the mix, including Cape Verde, Morocco and even Thailand. All currently offering gloriously warm temperatures, sandy beaches and lots of sunshine.

It's really wishful thinking, spurred on by the miserably damp weekend and the realization that we may have a long, cold and wet winter ahead of us (global warming be damned! We want snow, not rain!).

So far, we've decided to take a mini-cruise to Kiel in Germany some time in November.

- Yes, it's a two-day event.
- Yes, in a confined space with two boys. And it's sure to be cold and wet outside in November.

Why do you ask?

The Evil Forces Of Fall

Warning: Self-indulgent post follows...

You should know that the Universe is not in Order. That evil forces are at work, throwing expected patterns of development out the window. And you better run for cover before it's too late.

Need proof? I give you Three Irrefutable Signs:

For days now, ever since the thermometer started hovering around 0 degrees Celsius in the morning, I've had a battle on my hands to get my children to wear warmer clothes to school. A thicker jacket, a hat, perchance some gloves.

Benjamin's 7 year old protestations eventually wear down and he can be persuaded to do the right thing. A promise of extra computer and/or playstation time may have something to do with it. [ What?! Don't roll your eyes at me like that. I'm fighting the good fight, people!] Satisfied, I'll watch him march off all snuggly warm, only to have him return from school, his jacket stuffed into his bag, blithely declaring that he didn't need it. All day. Because it was So. Hot! Grr.

Christopher is an even harder nut to crack. He simply refuses to put on anything other than his very light spring/fall jacket. Since reasoning isn't working, I've tried appealing to his vanity by arguing that his winter jacket is 'cooler', but no go. Apparently his jacket prevents him from being able to move. And as anyone with two brain cells know, it is vital that he move when he's playing soccer at recess. This is all explained with a look of utter exasperation on his 10 1/2 year old face. Needless to say, he's won most days.

So I've been waiting for the day when one of them would come home sick as a dog. Everyone knows that running around outside, getting hot and sweaty with minimal clothing in freezing temperatures is a first class ticket to illness. Right?

- Sign Number One That The Universe Is Not In Order -

Well, sick arrived yesterday at 5 pm. Only not in a boy. In my jacket-wearing, gloves-sporting self! Ooooh, the injustice of it all. So here I am all, all snivelly and feverish. Didn't get much sleep last night, and kept Mike up in the process. Who still had to single-handedly get our supremely healthy boys ready for school this morning, as I crawled back into bed complaining of all kinds of woes. Yep, he is lucky to have me, that one.

Don't get me wrong. I don't wish for my children to get sick. I am just saying this is not how it's supposed to work! They're supposed to bring home the sick from their germ-infested class mates. Anyone with grade school kids knows this to be a Universal Truth.

And yesterday started out as such a nice day, too. I had a leisurely lunch with my mother in town, followed by a stop at the photographer's studio to pick out our favourites from what was a surprisingly good set of pictures of the clan. We made plans to exercise that night. All was well in Norwayland. Until 5 pm, when BAM, it hit me!

- Sign Number Two That The Universe Is Not In Order -

It is an undeniable fact that a cold is preceded by a sore and scratchy throat. A built-in warning for mothers that it is time to get the shopping and Mt. Laundry reviewed and at least partially tackled. All in preparations for a couple of days of feeling under the weather. But this time around, there was no warning. Nothing. Nada. Nil.

So, consider this your warning!

- Sign Number Three That The Universe Is Not In Order -

....'kay, so I only have Two Irrefutable Signs. But since things always come in threes, I've probably just missed one in my fever-induced haze. I'll be sure to post an update, once I've figured this one out.

Until then, for your amusement, some Benjamin words of wisdom:

*****************************************************

He had already turned his light off when I walked into his room to say goodnight. I bent down and kissed his forehead.

"Good night, Mamma," he giggled.

"How did you know it was me?" I asked.

"Because you are tall and not so hairy."

******************************************************

Stay well and have a great weekend!

I Want To Just Ignore This Article...

...because I DON'T want to add to the excessive publicity it's no doubt receiving.

And yet here I am, making a stink. But I feel like I have to say something. If nothing else, then for my children and their future.

This particular person's done it before. I wish he'd stop talking altogether. In my opinion, he's an embarrassment to the human race.*

Sometimes I wonder, though, does he really believe the things he spews out? Or is it all an attention-grab?


(*please note: singular).

Can I Thank You?

Why do the two countries celebrating Thanksgiving do so on completely different dates? Are they not celebrating the same thing? To an outsider, this is very confusing. Kinda like the summer/winter time situation. Can't we all just change at the same time?

Monday was Thanksgiving in Canada.

I haven't actually been in Canada to celebrate Turkey Day for the past several years, as I usually take the boys to Norway for a week's visit with their cousins at this time of year. Because of the University schedule, Mike has to stay behind and thus often spends Thanksgiving with his mother, who cooks up a feast for him. His life is rough, as we already know.

This year, of course, Mike is with us here in Norway, and Monday's dinner was spaghetti and meat sauce. Benjamin's request. He thought it was good, and Mike seemed to like it.

Good thing, too, because that is pretty much the extent of my cooking abilities.

Anyway, as I was enjoying my list of blogs yesterday, I couldn't help but get inspired by all the Canadians blogging about their Thanksgiving weekend. They described their meals and family get togethers in glorious detail. Which made me hungry and lonely.

Enraptured, I seized the opportunity and have now invited my family to join us for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.

I am really looking forward to it. It's going to be great! We are going to have turkey, and stuffing, and...eh... veggies...potatoes (?)...sauce (or should that be gravy?), and all that.


[....swallow...gulp...swallow...]

WHAT WAS I THINKING?

I have no idea how to prepare Thanksgiving dinner. I have never cooked a turkey in my life, barely even a whole chicken. And although I love stuffing, I have absolutely no understanding of what it is or how it's made. As far as I know, it's just "stuff" that you STUFF into the turkey. Somewhere. In either end.

Hmmm...maybe we won't be needing stuffing after all.

But what about the other integral parts of a Thanksgiving dinner. Exactly what are they? Should that be potato wedges or mash? Bacon or sausages? Veggies? Cranberry sauce?

How do I turn this:





Into that:



Anyone? I'm desperate!

We're baaaack....

...but I wish we weren't!

We spent an amazing week with the Wades, in a beautiful villa, perched on top of a hillside, overlooking an infinity pool which seemingly spilled into a canyon below and the Mediterranean ocean in the distance.

The weather was fantastic the whole week. It only rained once, and that was overnight. The temperatures were in the low 30s Celsius the entire week, but because we were close to the ocean, the air wasn't sticky.

The days were spent either lounging around the pool watching aquatic high jumping (a future Olympic event, no doubt):






...or at one of a couple of beautiful, sandy beaches within a short driving distance from our villa, building sand castles in an ever more heated competition between the girls and the boys (please don't forget to take the poll to your right):




Occasionally we would give the swim wear a rest for a quick excursion to one of the many antiquities around the island:



...before we'd return home to watch the sun set over the ocean from our villa:




As soon as it got dark outside, we'd hit the restaurants for a different flavour every night. We had Asian, Italian and even British pub food (Benjamin's favourite, because they had chicken nuggets!), but mostly we enjoyed local Cypriot dishes with a couple of fantastic meze dinners:



In sum, we had a wonderful week, and we returned to Norway late last night, relaxed, fairly tanned (especially those of us of non-Scandinavian origin) and happy.

[In retrospect, I now see that things had gone too smoothly. I mean, c'mon - all flights on time? That never happens. The Universe was not in balance. The pendulum was about to swing the other way.]

So this morning, we wake up to an email from our house sitting friend Cyril containing the following pictures (sadly with no pointing fingers this time):








Remember our leakage problem? Before we left for Cyprus, we had arranged for our insurance company to have an assessor visit our house, review the damage and provide a quote for any required repairs. We were still debating whether to even make a claim, because we were unsure of whether the cost of the repairs would be sufficiently high to warrant the resulting increase in our premium (don't you love that about insurance companies?).

Evidently, the insurance company decided to make that decision for us and take matters into their own hands! Without any efforts to contact us, and without consulting our friends staying in the house, walls have been torn down and plans are apparently being made to replace the kitchen cabinets?!

Excuse me, Mr. Insurance Agent and Mr. Contractor, I realize you are both...ehem...men...but how many women do you know who'll just let you redo their kitchen without any input?

So now I've done what I do best: I have instructed Mike to tell the insurance agent off! Big time! I have given him a play-by-play description of exactly what he should say when. The conversation has been scripted with no room for error.

Knowing full well that he will do it his own way anyway. Which will clearly be the wrong way, and my - untested - way infinitely better.

My plan (and Mike's, too...I think) is to ask the insurance company to halt all work (with a few pointed questions about why the work was started in the first place without a little something called permission ) and provide the quote that we requested.

Then we will decide what the next step should be. Our poor friends are now living in a construction zone with missing walls, which is hardly what they signed up for. We may just get the walls fixed in the dining room and bedroom, and then get the missing wall in the kitchen drywalled temporarily, until we get back to Canada in the spring. These are all things we will have to figure out in the next few days.

This has been a rude awakening after a week in Paradise. So right now, I am going to pour myself a very large glass of red wine, sit on the couch and wish myself back to...

Supermarket

After so many years abroad, I was bound to forget certain things about my ancestral land. So here's a newsflash - Canadian supermarkets spoil us. We drive into the parking lot, grab a cart, either from the stand outside or, in the event of inclement weather, from inside the store (after all, no one wants a wet cart) proceed to pick out our groceries and head to the checkout counter to pay. Then we wait for the cashier to hand us our bagged goodies. Back into the cart they go, out to the car we go. Voila. One shopping trip completed. Just like that. I never thought about it before; I just took it for granted. Occasionally, I have even been slightly annoyed with a cashier who did not bag according to my preferences - no meats with fruit, and please double bag those cartons of juice. I promise to change my ways when I return.

My eyes have been opened.

First off, getting a shopping cart, wet or not, is no piece of cake in Norway. If you do not have a 10kr. coin, you are out of luck. No cart for you. They have a system where all carts are chained together, and will only be released by inserting a 10kr. coin into the slot on the handle of the cart. You do get your coin back upon return of the cart, but what good is that if you have no 10kr. coin to begin with?

Of course, you could try the basket approach. Baskets require no coins. However, if you have ever tried to do a major shop with a basket, you already know that it is not feasible. Not only are baskets designed to be as uncomfortable as possible, perhaps to avoid theft (because I for one am dying to get my hands on the latest basket), but they are also totally impractical when buying anything heavy. Rule no. 1 when using a cart is "Thou Must Balance Thy Load". Thus, you cannot buy one liter of milk. You must buy two 1l cartons, and place one liter on either side of the basket. If not, your basket will tip and your groceries will hit the floor! Speaking from experience here. Then there is the obvious issue of size. After two liters of milk, you have no space left to do any other shopping that day. Your basket is now full. Depending on your dexterity, you could, of course, try "multiple basket" shopping, but I do not recommend it. Again, I am speaking from experience.

But let's say that you found a 10kr coin, got your cart and were able to shop to your heart's desire. You might still be in for a bit of a surprise when you try to pay for your groceries. Because not only do you have to bag your own groceries...you also have to pay for the bags to do so. This drives Mike absolutely crazy. Every time we go shopping, he kicks himself for having forgotten to bring bags from home. To be fair, the bags are not expensive - about 15 cents at current exchange rates - and they are of much better quality than the flimsy bags we use in Canada. So in that sense, this is probably more environmentally friendly, as we use less than half the number of bags for an average grocery run.

However, it is the stress of actually having to bag them yourself that gets to me. Who knew that bagging groceries would be a race to the finish? The cashier just slides the groceries down into the bagging area, and they have an interesting divider that lets the last person finish bagging theirs, while yours are being rung up. Then you are on the clock to get yours bagged before the cashier starts sending another customer's groceries down to your side of the bagging area. Thus, it is a two person job to go to the supermarket. One person needs to be bagging, while the other one pays.

Mike and I are starting to get with the program, and I am sure we will be expert baggers by the time we head back to the other side of the Atlantic. In fact, I can see this developing into something of a competition. Who can bag the fastest, and with the fewest bags? Who will be the Bagging Champion?

I will keep you posted on our progress, but I for one will REALLY appreciate the next time a cashier hands me bags of groceries. :)

It's...hilly...in.....Norway!!

Athleticism does not come naturally to me. It is hard work. I am not one of those people who wake up in the morning eager to hit the gym/pool/pavement. That's not me. Nope. Far from it. Instead, I have to push myself to get off the couch. Or have a gym buddy who does the pushing for me (thanks, Morag!).

I do admit that the feeling I have after exercising is one of absolute bliss. There is no better feeling than the one you get when your body has been pushed hard. Or maybe it is just the thought that I do not have to exercise again for another 24 hours. That could be it, but I don't think so - I mean, why else would I keep going back? Oh, yes... my buddy Morag! An intimidating force in her own right! But I digress...

Ever since arriving in Norway, a little voice inside my head has whispered steadily louder about how far away from GoodLife I am. Half around the world! Freedom! No more exercising for a whole 10 months. Lax mornings, lounging around in bed until the kids holler for breakfast. No stinky gym clothes to launder on a daily or semi-daily basis. Yes, freedom indeed!

Not so fast...have you met my husband?! My die hard, born-again exercising fantatic hubby?! Keen, keen, keen...everything you don't want to see at 7 am in the morning. I love him dearly - but I have to admit to cooler feelings when he wakes me up with a "Are you ready to go for a run?" In a weak moment, I apparently agreed that going for a run every day would be a great way to stay in some semblance of physical shape while travelling in Europe, and he is now holding me to it!

Most days I join him...I know it is good for me, and like I said before, I do feel better afterwards. But there is a huge difference between running in Richmond Hill and running in Norway...an unexpected, nasty, geographical difference. There are HILLS here! Everywhere you look, there are hills. And they always seem to be going UP from where I am standing. My legs burn like nothing I have experienced before, my brain screams for oxygen, and my lungs roar back that there is no oxygen left in the world. I pant, I gasp, I heave.

And I try awfully hard not to take it out on my husband. However, as he is chatting happily with me while running, and actually expecting me to respond, it dawns on me that he is not feeling these hills like I am. And his unfairly looooong legs are handling the ups and downs just fine. It is so hard not to come out with a snappy reply. Fortunately for him, on most days my severely oxygen-deprived brain is unable to do so.

I am lucky he still asks me to join him for these runs. And my hope is that if my cardiovascular system ever gets into sufficient shape where I can actually have a conversation with him while running up these hills, I will no longer feel the need to bite his head off! :)