Sunday, September 16, 2018

Lägenhet a Swedish word I can pronounce and surviving IKEA on a Saturday





How many things do you do alone?  When I lived in L.A., people used to remark on their ability to see a movie alone as if it was...well remarkable.  I understood a bit better when people would talk about dining alone, but I didn't cook, so for me the choice was "Dine alone, or eat from the AM/PM".  Actually as a teenager living alone in L.A., being able to afford my 'Chinese Chicken Salad, no Chicken, dressing on the side' filled me with such pride, that I never thought about the fact that I was alone.
Thirty-five-ish years later and there are things I hate doing, and definitely not alone.  Surviving IKEA on a Saturday is a good example.
I am still keeping this blog in its limited fashion as a timeline for my brain that refuses to understand maths. I round all numbers...which leads to adding or subtracting years, which leads to muddling up life events and this blog works well to set that straight.  Yet, I have never written other than cryptically - when other people are involved. Who am I to write about other people?  This funny habit was the exact same style of writing that led to most of my written journals being too hard for me to decipher. Which might be for the better as I am not sure I like my younger selves.
Anyway- We might say 'Thanks for the memories' to our current Lägenhet. There is much involved in this process that I, as a foreigner would sum up with the 'att passa' verb in Swedish.
This is Swedish so one verb or one word is capable of many meanings- I think of it as the Swedish collective spirit.  Anyway, there are items that "must" be in each photograph of the apartment.  One can pay to do this...what I would think of as staging the apartment- some (enthusiastic S pulling along E in her wake) friends have been helping.  Staging is quite expensive- and I do always use my time over money, in this type of situation- a situation I feel I can handle.  But also I have been boring myself to tears doing the deep cleaning, scrubbing, sorting, sanding, touching up paint.  But other than time a price to be paid was yes, the Saturday trip to IKEA. We also had two sincerely delightful small people who rallied even when Småland had a 1 HOUR wait so they came along, for the shopping, behaving if not better, well no actually they behaved better than us.
 Help arrives tomorrow morning-
I hope my second cup of coffee rouses me enough to see if the paint in the entryway has dried (it was easily 6 years old and left by a previous occupant - but all the paint was oil based...and seemed the least ecological items I have had to face off with in ages so I used them...)  
 

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