It’s been another crazy busy weekend in the string of crazy busy weekends that make up my life. On Friday, I had another (!) Wonders dinner, this time without Angie, at Kelly’s home. I joked the since we were missing “won”, we were only the Drrrrs. It was not the most fun evening, since we mostly talked about our anxieties over the upcoming election and divorce/custory horrors. The next time we’ll see each other is Thanksgiving here in Flyinge, but that’s not until the beginning of December (our date is late this year due to Anders’ work travel schedule).
Last night was a dinner party slash bachelorette bash with colleagues (slash friends). We were nine women and it quickly got out of hand 🙂 in a good way. We started at Barbara’s home and surprised our friend Helen, who was only expecting the half of us that she usually has dinner with. Barbara had made a huge spread of the most delicious appetizers and we all stuffed ourselves. We had an 80 smash hits playlist playing and Suzanne had made Jello shots so there was soon quite a lot of loud laughing and dancing. There was even a cake with a penis on it (so vulgar! so 80s! so funny!) made from a banana and both halves of a Swedish chocolate ball (covered with shredded coconut). We dressed Helen up in ridiculous accessories (candy bra, pink feather boa, garter belt, “Bride-to-be” deely-bobbers) and played games and then headed by train to Malmö for yet more food and drinks, all the while singing 80s tunes…at the station, on the train, and walking down the street. We went to Pinchos which is the new trendy app restaurant in Malmö but which I wasn’t super impressed with.
The weather could have been better, since it was pissing down rain all evening, and has been very windy for 2 days, blowing all the pretty leaves off the trees. We managed to wrap it up at a rather reasonable hour, by dint of having to catch a particular train or being forced to wait another hour, so I actually made it home by midnight. Where I found both Martin and Anders had already gone to bed and Karin, who had a friend sleeping over, in full-on dramatic make-up (her friend is taking some sort of high school program for make-up artistry).
I managed to sleep in a little bit this morning, but am still really tired. I had an extra choir practice from 11-1 and then Anders, Karin and I went to Malmö to spend a few hours with his mom. Martin spent the afternoon and evening with friends making sushi.
Martin agreed to help me yesterday with choir practice, much to his regret. He and I went to the store in the early afternoon, and while we were on the way, I told him that I needed help, because this coming Friday I am singing in a concert and I have to know 2 verses of the de facto Swedish “National” song by heart and I’m the only non-Swedish born person in my choir, and I didn’t learn it in SFI when I moved here or when I became a citizen, and OMG SO FUNNY. I CANNOT get the melody right and Martin was dying of laughter and embarrassment and horror at my pronunciations. He went over the words and the melody with me line by line and I repeated them after him and every time something was wrong. We were laughing so hard we were crying.
It’s the weirdest melody: it goes up when you expect it to go down and down when you expect it to go up, and it’s full of old-fashioned Swedish words and some of the lyrics are just plain stupid: Jag vet att Du är och Du blir vad Du var, for example, which translates to “I know that You (the country) are and You will be what You were”. I have the tendency to sing every line like the last one, which just made Martin writhe. BUT! Today at practice I managed to get through the whole thing with NO MISTAKES! So, yay me and yay for my song coach!
I’m really hoping that this week at work won’t be as hellacious as the last few have been but it’s a forlorn hope, I’m afraid. We have to pick up Anders’ car from service tomorrow, which means Anders is driving mine to work and dropping me off, which in turn means I’ll be early to work and not leaving until late (which also means I might miss WW). I have a dentist appointment on Tuesday. On Wednesday I have the handover AWC board meeting. Thursday is choir practice and Friday I have a half-day work conference and then choir rehearsal all afternoon before the concert at 7. WHEW. And now we also have plans to have brunch with Anders’ family on Sunday.
Martin has made some progress on his to-do list: he’s applied to two colleges! Both of them are in Michigan and he has two more that he’s applying to (both also in Michigan) as well. He’s filled out the federal financial aid form online, and now he has to finalize his photography portfolio and order copies of his IB diploma to send with the applications. He can’t apply for financial aid from the Swedish government until he’s been accepted by a school, apparently but I need to verify that. I understand why he wants to go the States for school, but I really really hope he’ll be able to get some grants and scholarships, because otherwise he will be so in debt when he graduates that I wonder if it will have been worth it. Did I mention that school in Sweden is free? *sigh*
He also came home with his hair dyed white-silver this past week. 😀 At least it’s better than a tattoo! Karin is also going blond(er) on Tuesday…one of her friends has a mom who is a hairdresser and they need hair models to use as examples of different techniques. She’s getting her hair done in an ombré so hopefully it will look natural 🙂
OK, that’s all. Need to get some things done tonight before I collapse, muddy and exhausted.