Norway

Christmas 2021

Hi you all! Long time, no see. I won’t make any excuses about the time, there’s never enough time, but when there is, I seem to be letting it slip from my hands by doing nothing much. November has been cold and I’ve been sitting by the fire, pretty much like my cats used to do. 🙂 I guess it’s not really a waste of time, as long as it’s a sort of therapy- your body and mind tell you that you need to rest and you’d better listen. Especially since I’m still waking up at 5 am and the days are a mist of a never-ending todo-list. Too bad this inactivity usually spills over into my admin work, so that I’m way behind with my VAT again. But that’s a different story.

How have you been? I miss you commenting my entries, but hey, as long as I’m hardly ever in here anymore, I can’t expect you to be. 😉 We’ve been decorating a little, it looks really Christmassy and cosy here. And Madeleine and I made gingerbread twice, with the kind of dough you buy in the stores, since I can’t seem to find the inspiration for any real baking these days. She really enjoyed it, both eating the dough (and the cakes) and fooling around shaping it. 😉 I won’t even mention the mess…

Work is slow, but I don’t mind it that much, as long as I know I have a couple of cases coming up in January. I’m finding it harder and harder to put up with the way interpreters get treated, but I won’t even go there, I feel like a broken record as it is. I should probably do something entirely different, but until the day I figure out what that might be, I’m taking my Bachelor in interpreting, to be on the safe side. Just handed in my exam, I wrote all kinds of personal bullshit and I’m not expecting to pass, but at least I gave it a go.

Otherwise I’m really close to taking my driving test (and hopefully my driver’s license), I’m already planning to lease a car in February or March. Cross your fingers! I can’t bear another day without a car! I know it’s not politically correct to even think that, but the city is not made for getting around by bus with a toddler in pram and between walking Sam, her getting her nap and the short winter days- it gets dark at 3:30!!- we seldom get to do anything else than buy cocoa at the coffeeshop 5 minutes by bus from our home.

Christmas is around the corner and I’m looking forward to a break from it all. We bought very little presents and just gave each other a vintage lounge chair, the type you sit in by the fireplace. For Madeleine I ordered a toy train set, a book (mostly because I’m bored reading the old ones) and a set of jumper and beanie in a traditional Norwegian knitting model. I used to hate them before, maybe because I also had one when I was little and it itched like hell, but now I find them really cute (and warm). 😉 What are you getting your loved ones for Christmas?

Hope to be back with a recipe soon!

xxx, Alina

Funny How Things Turn out in Life

I’m sorry for my long absence, these days I call it a good one if I get to shower, there’s Madeleine and then there’s everything else. So four months have passed since I last wrote a couple of words and believe me, it’s a wonder I’m writing this entry now. 😉 (If it isn’t dinner, it’s walking Sam, or she wakes up on account of separation anxiety or I’m simply dead and waiting to be buried ;-))

You see, having yearned for a child for all my life, when it finally happened, I should have been in 7th heaven, but the truth is corona monopolized our lives and on top of that I had no idea raising a child would be this hard. Some days I feel I’m just starting to keep afloat, most days I don’t.

But the happiness is real. You do get to wake up to (and in our case with) a funny little creature so happy it’s out of line when the clock shows only 5:30, then you start singing and clapping your hands the minute you’ve put on your socks and from there it can only get better. She gets her milk and I brew my coffee while checking the infection rate in Oslo- haha.

As I was telling you everything is about Madeleine these days. Although she started kindergarten on the 1st of March, it feels like for the better part of the time she’s either been sick or her group/the kindergarten have been closed. So I work if I get the chance and I’m happy if I get to meet up in person, because seeing people is what keeps me sane.

We’ve been cheering for spring for a month now and now she’s there and then she isn’t. How about where you live? Do you get to at least be outside, with all these restrictions? We have, even when it’s been too cold to enjoy it, we’ve bought a coffee and pushed the stroller and tried to keep our chin up.

The vaccination is slow or maybe I’m just too impatient and so we don’t dare to make any plans, either, not even for a weekend a couple of hours away where there’s more life than here. Up until now it was sort of a conscious decision not to go anywhere, but now I feel I’d give my right arm to get a taste of normality just for a day or so.

Otherwise, we’re good. There’s almost nothing left of my life before children and I miss it terribly, but there’s no time to mourn and her being so sweet definitely helps.

I wish you a happy spring, wherever you are!

xxx, Alina

A Newborn in the House and Baking against Corona Anxiety

These past three weeks have been eventful and strange. Their newness and uncertainty propelled me into one hell of an anxiety carousel. Here I was, heavily pregnant, nesting with a fervor I’d never known before, worried about petty things as the right measure on her bed linen- little did I know she won’t want to sleep in her bed at all- and all of a sudden the world seems to be ending amidst my long awaited happiness.

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Just three weeks ago I was busy complaining about pelvic pains and feeling fedd up with being huge and now I had to find new ways of reassuring myself we won’t all die of starvation if the virus doesn’t get to us first.

She came into our world on the 7th of March, she rushed in 8 days before the due date, almost as if she’d known that if she’d linger any longer, her dad wouldn’t be allowed to see the birth and stay with us in the hospital any longer. The first days were hard, I had the chills 4-5 times a day and she wouldn’t nurse, so we eventually had to feed her formula from a small cup (and it’d take hours!) hoping things would improve when the milk came. It didn’t. (But that’s an entirely other story.)

After an extended stay,  we could finally leave the hospital (after 7 days!), just in time for the Corona quarantine. That evening F shopped for groceries and there was no more toilet paper, nor tomato sauce, nor pasta or rice. Panic! After that, things went back to a sort of normality, at least when it comes to finding food on the shelves. But the longer it dragged on, the more somber the statistics all over the world, the less we saw of friends and family, one day I wasn’t able to control my anxiety at all. Some days it took the best of me and I could only sit there with a huge black hole inside of me. Other days, when the weather was sunny, we ventured outside and realized the world was still there, humanity had not evaporated and I came back lightheaded as though I’d had a pint or three. Today I decided to get back on medication, after spending all yesterday’s hours when Madeleiene didn’t need me either baking bread, baking a cake, washing clothes, all in order to avoid agonizing.

I’m heading to the pharmacy in an hour’s time, but I already feel better. I don’t read the news any more, I try not to think of how “non-essential” people will pay their rent, I ordered some stuff online and I’m doing my best to use all the ingredients we have in the house in a smart way. Meanwhile, I’m kissing my daughter’s chubby legs and sniffing her scalp. And thinking how I’ll start saving money and making room for a pantry when the times are better.

And here’s the recipe for the cake I baked the other day. I used the stuff we had, like 4 overripe plums and apple juice instead of orange juice.

Ingredients

100g walnuts

250 dates ( I had some dates, some dried figs and some dried apricots)

the zest from an orange/lemon

300g flour

1 tea spoon baking powder

1/2 tea spoon cardamom

1/2 tea spoon cinnamon

200 ml orange juice

100g butter

150 g brown sugar (I only had white)

1 egg

(I used 4 plums as well)

Bake the walnuts in the oven on a parchment paper around 15 minutes at 150 degrees C.

Cut the dates (and the other dried fruit plus the plums). Add the walnuts, the orange/lemon zest and one spoon of the flour. Sift the rest of the flour with the baking powder and the spices. Put it aside.

Use a kitchen aid/mixer to “fluff the butter up”. Add the egg and mix them well together. Add the flour, then the orange/apple juice. Then add the walnuts and dates (dried fruit and fruit) into the dough. Pour the dough (it’ll be a bit runny, it’s fine) into a cake form lined with parchment paper and bake at 180 degrees C for 1 h. Sometimes it needs a bit longer, check it with a chopstick. 😉

Bon appetit!

PS. Go for a walk if allowed in your part of the world, here it’s still ok (but we have to keep the distance). With a newborn I don’t get to do it every day, but when I do, I feel sanity rushing back into my veins. Today I even crossed the street to avoid other humans. But since I had to go to the pharmacy, I ran into people after all.

Stay safe and I hope we’ll all make it to the other side. I know, it sounds like something you hear in Sci-fi movies. 😉

xxx, Alina

 

 

 

Christmas Break

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Phew, done with everything (that counts)! From today on I’m officially off duty and I’m enjoying it to the fullest. Outside it’s snowing, I’ve walked Sam and made myself a ham and cheese sandwich, the apartment is warm and the gifts are all wrapped up, the tiny tree is decorated and I’ve even remembered to buy pantyhose for the Christmas dinner. 😉 Haha! (I always forget!) Continue reading →

Fall Again

I have to admit I was done with the Mediterranean heat, but did I see fall coming? Not for a second. It’s been raining on and off for days and it’s the second weekend it’s pouring like there’s no tomorrow. Depressing doesn’t even begin to cover it. I feel like going to bed never to wake up again and I’m not even kidding.

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Home again

Summer holiday is over and to begin with I didn’t really know if I should be sad or relieved, as I was a bit tired of the heat and I’d started missing Sammy and my friends.   Besides, all good things come to an end and if they didn’t, we would just take them for granted in the end. 😉 Although, between me and you, going back to jackets and carrying an umbrella in my bag was not my plan for August, I have to admit.

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My Oslo

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Lately I find myself fascinated by people. And, as it is with many other things, once you start looking around, you can’t undo it, you notice all sorts of patterns, all sorts of folks and funny behavior you just need to photograph. That being said, I’m not there quite yet. In fact the pictures with the best potential were the ones that got too blurry because I didn’t have the balls to focus or to go close enough. You see, in Oslo it’s not customary to take pictures of people without their knowing. But hey, I can’t help myself! So here they are. Lady in red, waiting by the bus. Continue reading →

Cabin weekend

Hi, friends! Missed me? I don’t know what I do with my time, it flies so fast! I’ve been trying hard to learn how to drive responsively and it seems to be such a big task for a wooly-headed person like me. I keep driving 20 km under the speed limit on a highway and 20 km over in the city! Plus I get really impatient with bikes and people who cross the street when they shouldn’t. Not to mention that I can’t concentrate for two hours in a row for the life of me, I probably have some undiagnosed ADD, ’cause I’ve always been like that. Haha!

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