sweden day one--uppsala wanderings

on friday we had steven's going away. my jump out of a cake, ie box, plan went quite well. he was wearing his infamous spaghetti and meatballs halloween costume and we filmed it in slow motion. we closed early and had our good bye get together which ended in a core group of us singing karaoke. 

wild.

saturday i was productive in that i went to richmond country farms and bought many kinds of apples, some plums and other sundry, did some other grocery shopping, and then made a swedish apple crisp, hummus, and peanut butter.

saturday was dad's birthday. uncle duncle and jenny came over with chinese food and we had a good chat and chomp. duncle was thoroughly and deeply appreciative of my apple crisp and that is as it should be. all is right in the world...in the swedish apple crisp world... then we watched the slide shows i made for dad's celebration of life. and that might have done them in. there was one more slide show to watch and mom and i watched it together.

sunday katie gave the best devo like only katie  can do. carmen showed us her ring and asked if we were going to be there in december when she gets married. mom said she would for sure, and then she said "see you in heaven!" we all nodded along and stopped, "wait..what? are you saying one of you will be dying soon?" mom tried to offer a number of explanations but that did not stop it from instantly becoming a thing. both jordan and even left the call with the words "see you in heaven!" click.

sunday afternoon i chatted with heather. it's our phone day. and then i did some cooking. i made a turkey breast roast. i glazed it with the dewberry chutney i got in gotland and roasted it with carrots and rosemary, thyme and a bulb of garlic. i also used my home grown spaghetti squash with thyme, sage (from garden also), a little honey and parmesan. the turkey was juicy  but i didn't taste the chutney too much. the squash was quite yummy as were the carrots.

today i was minding my own business on my morning walk only to look over my shoulder and discover a glorious sunrise bursting forth behind me. very sneaky. you never know what glories are lurking. this afternoon we met with our strategic planner sheila. she's pretty wonderful. she has the gift of articulating to you in a beautiful, validating way all the wonderful things you are doing, but couldn't express yourself. and by you i mean the clubhouse. it was lovely. we are in such good hands.

then i beat mom in quiddler. very satisfactory feeling.

hubbs was a wake for a little while and we had some short chats. he's been so down recently, which he tries to hide and so he hides too much and i miss him. what's a lover to do?

let's go to sweden. i arrived in sweden on the afternoon of september 7th and kaetlyn was there to pick me up. it was so good to see her. she was like where do you want to go, what do you want to do? and i was like i don't know! we decided on exploring uppsala. so we parked her electric car and walked around.

one of our first stops was ice cream. we both got mango and lemon.

we saw this cute little tux garbage can man and i made kaetlyn pretend to throw something away. lol. she's very believable in this role.

kaetlyn took me up this hill to the town palace. this is the view of the botanical garden from the palace.

through this arch you can see the bell.

the church cathedral. every town's got one!

then we walked down to the gardens and more university stuff. uppsala is a university town and kaetlyn did some university here. this looks so fall.

there were some students singing and kaetlyn said students do these kinds of bonding things in their little groups.

there was a single seat attached to this lamp post so i had to sit on it.

this guy reminds me of mr. tumnus.

hiiiiii.

palace from gardens.

we sat on this supersized bench and talked for quite a while. we had a lot to catch up on.

then we booped this guy's nose on our way out of the gardens.

cathedral again

at some point in our wanderings kaetlyn pointed out a recumbant man statue that was heated. people sit on him in the winter and he's warm. how cool and quirky is that. i should have taken a picture, but i didn't.

eventually we decided to eat thai food. i had pad thai and a passion fruit shake. delish. 

then we drove to knivsta, which is where kaetlyn lives. her apartment is quite lovely. she's taken a lot of care in setting it up and has many stories about the distances and efforts she went through to aquire certain pieces. she has lots of art up too. lots of whimsy. also boobs. and octopi. i won't explain.

her bed is very very very comfy and she generously shared it with me. like she has the kind of bed that gives softness at your hips but firmness somewhere else. 

and that is day one in sweden.