It’s Mother’s day in America, but not here. Though Karin did remember and said happy mother’s day to me this morning, which was nice. She also weeded the front garden beds and went with me to the garden nursery where a ridiculous amount of people were unclear on the concept of social distancing. We bought some pretty-leafed plants to add/replace ones in the front. One had been smothered by grass and then eaten by dandelions and the others were to fill the spaces between hostas which are taking a long time to fill the spaces themselves. Anders has been outside doing garden work all day, weeding and cleaning up the birdseed and the stone areas. I’m hoping he’ll transfer the kohlrabi and carrots to the vegetable patch as well, but I don’t want to nag him. I’d do it myself but I can’t get down on my knees.
Why, you ask? Well, if you must know, I have bad knees to begin with, which makes kneeling really hard and getting up even harder, but on Thursday, Karin and I were in downtown Lund, having successfully shopped for Anders’ birthday presents and looking for a place to have dinner, we were traversing the narrow cobblestone streets and even narrower cobblestone sidewalks in the city center, when I suddenly stumbled/slipped/tripped on the curb and wiped out. It happened superfast and in slo-mo at the same time. I landed hard on one knee, scraping it and bruising my leg, gashed my thumb, wrenched my shoulder and neck and ended up with my face up against the building I was falling toward with my hand between it and my glasses. OW. And I smashed the box with the birthday cake in it, which I was holding when I went down. Since then, I’ve felt every morning as if someone spent the night beating me with sticks. Today was the first day I was able to walk on the treadmill, and I still couldn’t manage kneeling.
The worst part wasn’t even the fall. It was sitting on the sidewalk in the center of Lund, trying not to literally burst into tears because EVERYTHING hurt, and Karin was freaking out, and at least a dozen strapping young 20-somethings came rushing up, horrified, asking if I was okay and offering to help me up. No, please, I’m fine, just go away. GAH.
So that was just the topper on a thoroughly bad week, which included a little too much work drama/bullshit that I didn’t need. I really needed this weekend. And we’ve not down much other than gardening and small stuff around the house. Last night, Anders and I watched Swedish Television’s attempt to give the people what they want during quarantine: Eurovision. Since the actual Eurovision was cancelled due to the pandemic, they cobbled together a couple of hours to show all the entries that WOULD have been in the show, using music videos or clips from their performances. Mostly they were terrible: boring ballads, screamy ballads, super-emo ballads. There were only a couple of high spots and even those weren’t because the songs were very good. I know Eurovision quality is typically pretty bad, but this was exceptional.Sweden’s song, which I didn’t think was all THAT great before, really stood out in as one of the best ones, and would have had a good chance at winning the whole thing if the contest had gone ahead.
It was super-nice out earlier, hot and sunny with a little bit of a breeze but the clouds have rolled in and it’s quite overcast now, even though it’s still warm out. I’m bummed the weekend is already almost over; I could use another slug day.
The cake, by the way, though smashed, was still delicious (apple meringue).