Harvest

We've had a light frost for the past few nights, killing a lot of the flowers and vegetable plants. Yesterday, therefore I harvested what was left in the garden and feeding the greens (carrot greens and nasturtium plants to the chickens. Here is the result of my labors:

Internet troubles

While we were on vacation lightning hit and killed the internet modem as well as the telephone adapter. We ordered a new modem, and a week later it arrived. However after hooking it up we still had internet problems. For weeks our internet was erratic, falling in and out every minute or so and making it impossible to use the phone or skype. We complained to our provider and for a couple of weeks they did nothing. When I started threatening to withhold payment they sent around a repairman to check out the line. Still no improvement as yet another weekend passed. At this point I was calling them every day. The repairman came back, and was able to determine that it was not the line and so had to be the modem, convincing them to send us a new one (finally!). Lo and behold, when we hooked up the replacement modem a week later the net worked perfectly. So now we are finally back on line. I can call my mother (and any one else) again, and pick up my italian studies.


Yes, I have started an online Italian course from the BBC. I was able to sort-of do it while the internet was bad as well, but each page took forever to load so I didn't make much headway - then I'd start solving griddlers while waiting for the page to load and forget all about it... Anyway, now I am studying quite consciensciously. Question is will I actually remember how to say anything when placed in a real live situation in Italy?


Yes, we are going to Italy. That is why I am learning Italian. That week in the mountains and the second week orienteering were just half my vacation. The second half is scheduled for september when we are meeting Mother, Roland and Sharon at the Garda Lake, where we have rented an appartment in Malcesine for a week. Before meeting up in Verona, Husband and I are spending a few days in Venice...



Family News:

Tante Christina spent a weekend with us. We went on walks in the forest and watched the DVDs of her 80th birthday party, and her final Eurythmy performance. I realize I have never seen her do eurythmy before and she is REALY GOOD!! Interesting to see what Jan Benedikt and Åsmund look like on the birthday DVD. Oddly enough, I see a similarity between Jan Benedikt and Adam Helge! Åsmund is the spitting image of Onkel Harald!

Audun is back from Australia. He's staying with us while appartment hunting in Lillehammer. Starting work already on monday at his old market research job there.

Haven't heard from Tormod in a while (due to the above-mentioned phone problems).

Irene is having fun on her interrail trip according to occasional sms' and facebook updates. 

Got to spend some time with Ingvild this weekend. It's been a long time since we hung out together.

Next week my stepdaughter is getting married.

Anesthesia:

I didn't get the anesthesia job here at the hospital in Hamar. I find it hard to understand why. Sure, they could get people with more experience, this was a temporary position. Couldn't they have given me the chance to get the experience I so badly need. I have saved the hospital the cost of a stipend by paying my own way through the course, pluss I am familiar with the rutines of our hospital and the OR from my months of practice nursing. A nagging feeling at the back of my mind wonders if its personal - if they don't like me, or if they for some reason think I'm not good enough.  I try to tell myself that I like ER work (I do), and that I can use my competency in the ER (I can). However I feel a pressing need to practice actually anesthetizing people for a while, in order to get confident and increase my expertise.

Unfortunatly there are practically no jobs to be had. I have registered with Manpower and Addecco pluss a couple of other temp agencys as well as applied to a private hospital in Oslo that are looking for a nurse anesthetist. Unfortunatly unemployed nurse anesthetists are a dime a dozen in Oslo, and temp agencys want folks with experiece so my chances are like zero. Can't hurt to apply though I figure. My proffessional self confidence is being put to a sever test by all this. Sometimes I wonder if those 18 months of training were all a waste of time, money and energy. Thank goodness for the extremely nice swedish travellers with whom I am working a lot during these vacation weeks. Most of them are also nurse anesthetists. They are so supportive and encouraging. One of them suggested I start calling around to all the hospitals in Norway. Seems crazy, but maybe I should.

The Garden

The garden is looking good. Strawberries are almost done. Rasberries are in full fruit. The cherries (there were 3 or 4 - I planted the tree last year - are ripening). Black and red currents and gooseberries will be ready very soon. There are a number of green plums on one of the trees, but no apples. Why not? I have given Husband the task of figuring it out and making those trees produce. The sugar peas were dissapointing. I only picked about 3 times and they already seem to be done. The carrots and onions are looking good (but too early to harvest). What we are getting right now is lettuce, radishes, turnips and cucumbers (from the window sill). The first zucchini should be ready soon as well. The Kale and Broccoli look terrible. All full of holes. Someone told me about a kind of broccoli that gets little thin heads but gets them constantly? Hope I can get some seeds next year for those.

Indian Summer

Indian summer i over. For 3 weeks the days were mild, sunny and golden as the leaves gradually turned to yellows and reds. The blueberries ripened in the garden as did the apples and plums. The purple clematis finally opened it's buds and started flowering. Over the last two days it has gotten cold with rime on the grass in the mornings. It's time to dig up the carrots and red beets. I find myself humming Michaelmas songs during my morning walk with the dogs. Soon I will have to put a reflex jacket on Lucy so that I can see her in the dark of the morning. With the frost the realization flooded over med 8 MORE MONTHS before it is spring again! How will I be able to survive? It feels like forever. It feels like a sentence. One thing is sure, as soon as the house is paid off (in about 10 years), I will no longer stay in Norway for the winter. I'm sure I will again be able to enjoy the fall when I can look forward to going somewhere warm in November.

When I started work again 2 weeks ago, I was met with many kind questions regarding my loss. I guess my colleagues preferred to express their sentiments in person. The first weekend after coming home was difficult. I think the kind words and even a few hugs (from Norwegians, imagine!) helped to make things easier. It only comes in flashes now and then - the loss, the realization that he won't answer when I call, won't be there when I visit, won't be needing a christmas or birthday present...

Today was the last day at school. I have in these past weeks attended lectures on surgery and anesthesia to patients under special circumstances, a theme day on organ harvesting and transplantation, another on legal, practical and ethical aspects of medical tecknology, a 2 day ethics seminar, as well completing a research project and a project on anesthesia care of the elderly. On Monday starts the second period of student anesthesia practice: 10 weeks this time, in Elverum which has specialties in orthopedic, obstetric, gynecologic, ENT (ear nose throat) and eye surgery. Also coming up is a theme day on trauma care, and a day or teaching practice (we teach the bachelor students first aid). In November we have a multiple choice test in anesthesiology and in december, a week long home exam in anesthesia nursing. So if I do not update until christmas is because I am way too busy!

Before I sign off: Irene is coming home from England tomorrow! She is spending a week with us, before going to Oslo to resume her pastry chef training at a prestigious bakery, right around the corner from the Norwegian Parliament building. http://www.halvorsensconditori.no/ I wish her lots of luck!!!

Summer vacation

Finished the semester today with two breast cancer surgeries. Finally the last 9 weeks of intense praktical studies coupled with work in the ER have come to an end. It was a period of getting up at 5:30 every day, of leaving the house at 6:45 and coming home at 8 pm - mostly because either dentist appointments, orienteering or dog training followed immediatly after work. For 3 periods in the past 9 weeks, I worked for 12 days in a row before I had a weekend off. Almost every week I had a 15 hour workday, when, after spending 7 1/2 hours as a student in the OR, I went downstairs to the ER to work my regular 7 1/2 hr evening shift.

Ahead of me are 9 weeks of summer vacation. Time for the house and the garden. Time for travel and friends. Time to cook proper meals. I started already this afternoon by cooking spoonbread with fried bananas and steamed aspargus for dinner. Then I watered the plants, fed the cockatails and cleaned their cage. In the garden I rediscovered the strawberry plants under the weeds. They are blooming prolifically and I covered them with netting and also wrapped up the cherry tree in netting.

A phone call to Father, and a surprise visit from my brother-in-law and his familly rounded off the evening.

Home again

Once home it seems we have been on the run all afternoon/evening: Husband unpacked, then mowed the lawn, vacuumed where Funky has left a trail of sawdust and the birds have been spitting seeds and feathers, and picked strawberries. I picked up Topsy who had had an adventurous farm vacation complete with bicycle accident. She had to have stitches and antibiotics, but Andrea, the dog-sitter had taken care of everything, taking her to the horse clinic just down the road, and she has healed up just fine. Not even limping anymore. Afterwards, I unpacked, sorted and started laundry, and went through my mail, canceling books from my 2 book clubs, and making a list of things to take care of after the weekend. In the mail was a speeding ticket. Believe it or not, driving 88 km/h in an 80 zone is going to cost me $320! I am never going to speed again. Finally I picked up Blubbulf (my beta fish), and started washing 3 weeks worth of eggs. For dinner we had omelet (we'll be eating a lot of eggs for a while) and peas from the garden.

GARDEN NEWS
Started getting caught up with the garden today. Pulled up all the turnips and radishes, getting two large bowls of each. I expected them to be both wormy and woody, and was surprised to find that the ones I cut up for salad today were clean and tender. Two heads of lettuce had gone to seed so I pulled them up, but there is more lettuce as well as arucula, new zealand spinach, sugar peas, and for the first time ever scallions! The corn is getting close to knee high, the zuccini is blooming, the beans and kale, onions and carrots are looking good. A second sowing of lettuce has just come up. In the flower garden I see that I missed my new iris', though I'm happy to see that they did in fact bloom. Hopefully they will survive another winter so that I can enjoy them next year. The clematis and honeysuckle have grown, still no flowers though. In front of the cabin the poppies and lupines which were blooming when I left are done; peonies, lilies, roses and delfiniums are blooming instead. The herbs are all doing well; in the sandy bed on the south side of the house, lavender and flax are blooming, while the chamomile is going to seed. My indoor vegetables this year consist of a cucumber, a tomato, a melon and several peppers. The tomato is so heavy with green fruit that the branches were breaking off the stem. The melon actually has a melon on it and another threatening. But I'm dissapointed in the cucumber. So far the female blossoms have all dried up and come to nothing. There are a few more blooming right now, if they dry up too I'm throwing it out.

MAY

May has always been my favourite month, even though it is different in Norway, than in more temperate places I have lived. There, May was the month of lilacs and the first strawberries. Here in Norway, may is the month when the leaves come out on the trees, when daffodils and tulips bloom. When the woodlands are covered with white carpets of windflowers and blue anemones dot the moss. It has always been the month of my birthday, but in Norway May is punctuated with holidays. First comes May Day, which is the European equivalent of Labor Day; then there is the Norwegian National Holiday on May 17th. Also usually falling in May are the religious holidays of Ascension and Whitsun, both of which are observed with schools and businesses closed. Since ascension always comes on a Thursday, schools typically take a 4 day weekend. The following weekend, Whitsun, is observed as a long weekend with Monday off. And working on any of these holidays gives 133% overtime in Norway (hooray for social democracy!)


May Day this year has been a productive day for me. The rain that has been threatening for nearly a week finally began coming down in earnest. I spent some time out in the garden right after breakfast: planted a sweet cherry tree, and a rhododendron. Mulched the blueberries and the other rhododendron with the remaining sack of rhododendron soil, and raked the straw mulch off the iris’ that I had set in the fall. That was as far as I got before it started raining. Perfect weather for newly planted trees and bushes!


Husband and I and Topsy also went orienteering. It was a great course, not too easy, not too hard: 1.8 km with 10 controls! I love running through the woods, along paths or just by compass, stopping now and then to study the map. I’m really not very good. I just love the challenge, the exercise and the woods. This course took me 34 minutes.


I’m at work now. The rain continues to fall. It is quiet in the ER, but I have a patient coming in by ambulance in a little while. So I’m sure there will be some nursing challenges today also.

cooling my heels

Still not working. On Tuesday I called my doctor's office: no result on the mrsa test yet. On Wednesday, a week after I took it, I called both in the morning and in the afternoon. Still no results. So I got on the phone to the laboratory that is running the test, and guess what? They had received the test but it wasn't labeled. So now I have had to go and have it taken again. I was fuming! This means another whole week before I can start working. A week without income. "You don't have to pay anything this time" they said when I had retaken the test! I should think not. Their mistake has cost me a weeks wages!!!

The weather is still predominantly sunny, but cooler. Definitely with the feel of fall. While waiting for the mrsa results, I am cooling my heels at home. Meantime I am spending my time cooking, gardening and working out.

On Tuesday and Friday mornings I go to spinning followed by toning exercizes. Thursday afternoons is orienteering training, and last Saturday I orienteered in a competition. Came in last (by 20 minutes) cause I didn't realize that a ski trail was supposed to be the path marked on the map. Next week I'll finally start dancing again. Husband has agreed to go swing dancing with me. That will be Wednesday evenings.

Since Husband has stopped eating meat, I'd got one of Molly Katzen's cookbooks second hand on the commons in Ithaca. She's the lady who started the Moosewood restaurant, and I'm trying out some of her recipes. Unfortunately many of them use various wines and other alcoholic beverages, and as a non-drinking family we don't have that sort of thing in the house, and I can't bring myself to go out and buy it just to experiment with recipes which I might decide I didn't like...

In the garden Husband and I built supports for the raspberries - a storm had broken off all the branches full of nearly ripe fruit - and planted a new strawberry patch with the runners from the old patch.

Home, sweet home

"How is it to be back?" is what everyone asks me. What shall I say? I miss the climate. Where the summer in Ithaca was sunny, whether cool, or hot, dry or humid, with the occasional thunderstorm, here it is cloudy, cool (50's and 60's), humid, rainy, with the occasional cool, breezy, sunny day thrown in.

But I love the hills and forests! And I love being back in my own house and garden, living with my husband, my children close by, surrounded by my pets: Topsy the border collie, the cats: Sebastian, Pirill, and Funky (Puseline hasn't been home since I came back), 2 cockateils, and a beta fish, newly aquired.


My own house and garden! Husband has taken such good care of them: the house clean, neat, the grass short, flower beds weeded and vegetable beds turned and ready for planting next spring. We will plant a new strawberry bed this fall. Of the apple trees, one has apples, the other does not. One of the plum trees is loaded, the other has one (!) plum. One of the blueberry bushes has blueberries, as does one of the red currents. The black currants and gooseberry bushes are hanging full. I picked the gooseberries today for a cake as my good friend Nils came for dinner tonight, and to introduce his new partner.

We are getting settled. Ingvild has made her home in the the cabin. We have been to Oslo (70 miles) to get dance duds for her. She is happily reunited with all her friends. 7 of them met us at the airport, falling all over her with squeals of joy. Since then she has been at two slumber parties and is planning one herself for friday.

I have been promised a temporary job at the ER in Hamar (closest town, 10 miles away), but can't start until my mrsa status has been cleared (whether I am a carrier of pennicillin resistant bacteria). I have a doctors appointment next wednesday. Today I will see the dentist and the optician to have my teeth and eyes checked. So now I have 2 weeks of vacation to enjoy, because the earliest I can start work will be the 28th.