An ER visit, a scolding, and 2 Mother's Days

This post was inspired by reading someone else's blog.  The woman is an expat, like myself, only she has four kids.  The quote that inspired me to start writing today is,  "my kids are not richer nor poorer" for this experience.  How true this is!  Many of our friends and family look at the lives we are living now and think we are "living the life".  And yes, in many ways we are.  My children have visited more countries in this past year than my parents did their entire lives.  Field trips and soccer tournaments take place in foreign countries.  We have so many weeks of vacation that sometimes I feel overwhelmed with all of our travel plans.  But, the flip side of this life is something that I struggle with often.  I lived in the same town and the same house until I went to college.  I still have my best friends from elementary school in my life, and the memories of my childhood are amazing.  I remember all the summers spent riding bikes, swimming in our town pools, and then as we grew up and went to high school, all the parties and teenage fun that came with that. We lived in a town where all the parents knew each other, and sneaking around was very difficult to pull off with "eyes" always on you.   So, the part that I struggle with, is that my boys will not have this life.  They won't grow up in the same house, with the same friends, and have that nostalgic feeling when they go "home".  So, which one is better, which kid is "richer"?  I'm not sure I know the answer to that question.  I always thought my kids would grow up the same way I did.  Isn't it funny how our lives turn out so differently than what we expected them to be?

The beginning of May was filled with a few weeks of a lot of rain.  I thought we were heading in the wrong direction with the sunlight there for a while.  Finally,  the sun popped out!  After coming off of a winter with dark, dreary skies, the sunshine is something I look forward to everyday.   Even though we all feel this way,  when the sun doesn't shine, and the rain is pouring down, the city is still bustling with people.  The kids are still playing in the parks, streets are still packed with people and their umbrellas, and of course..... the park in front of our school is filming a music video of a famous band or artist.  I'm not sure who or what brought the filming crew, but there was a week of music playing and filming taking place, all in the pouring rain.

not sure who they are... but they were dedicated

While all of this rain was pouring down from the sky, my kids were going a bit stir crazy inside the house.  Yes, we did our fair share of playing outside, but when the weather is that terrible, none of us want to spend a lot of time outdoors.   My three little athletes love to run, jump, kick, throw, and do all things related to sports.  They also feel the need to play soccer in my living room on a regular basis.  Regardless of how many times I ask them to stop, I can't seem to win this battle.  I'm sure it doesn't help that Daddy is encouraging the sport in our home.  Needless to say, the Saturday that they were cooped up in the house all day, they played a lot of soccer in our living room.  Around 6:00 I was cooking dinner and I hear our doorbell ring in a very "angry" tone.  I opened the door to the mean old man that lives below us (remember the man that screamed at me on the elevator a few months back?).  He was fuming!  He started yelling at me, asking me if we have elephants living in our home.  Because I didn't appreciate him coming to my door and yelling at me, I answered him, "yes, as a matter of fact we do have elephants living in our home".  (This really isn't a lie. I do feel like I live in a zoo most of the time).  He then told me that he is sick and tired of all the noise that the kids make in my apartment... blah blah blah!  Between you and I, I happen to agree with him.  My boys are loud, and they shouldn't be playing soccer in my living room.  But.... since he was so rude to me once again, I refused to apologize to him.  I don't understand why he insists on yelling at me on a regular basis.  He could ask me nicely to quiet down, and I will gladly make that happen.  So, since that evening, I have run into him about ten times.  He smiles and says hi to me like we are best friends.  I guess he believes that best friends scream and yell at each other when they are angry.  Needless to say, I walk right past him like he doesn't exist.  I also don't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that we are moving in a few months.  I'm going to make him sweat it out until the day we leave.  Even though I love Kungsholmen, and I love our street, I really don't like this apartment complex.  There are too many older people that are stiff and cold.

The first weekend of May was filled with a few soccer games and a visit to Phil's Burgers, the new burger joint that opened a few blocks from our apartment.  These are the real deal.... but we need to cut back on them a bit.  Besides being really delicious, they are really fattening, really bad for our heart, and really expensive.  Five burgers, five fries and ZERO drinks cost us $90.  When I saw the bill, I about passed out.  Steve reminded me that this is not Phil's Burgers... it's Stockholm.  The cost of living in this city is astronomical.  I try not to do the conversions anymore (something Steve has been begging for me to stop doing since we moved here) because the sticker shock will bring you down.  But, when a burger and fries cost that much money, it's hard to swallow.......

That was the weekend that Jake and Smith each scored on penalty kicks.  Steve wasn't able to get Jake's goal, but he did capture Smith's.

This same weekend was Mother's Day in America.  I was thinking it was a great plan for me to celebrate Mother's Day on May 11th and then again on May 25th, Sweden's day to celebrate moms.  The problem was that my family didn't realize it was Mother's Day in America until the day of, and with soccer games all day, it never happened.  Lucky for Steve, he has a second chance, this Sunday.  The pressure is on!!! (see below.... this blog took forever to finish so you can see what happened on Mother's Day).

I'm sure you are wondering why we made a trip (or two) to the ER.  Ever since we came home from our trip to Florida and Steve recovered from what we think was the flu, his ankle has been doing some strange things.  He will be walking, with no trauma to the joint, and it will blow up like a balloon and cause unbelievable pain.  He will not be able to walk on it for three to four hours and then the following day he will be sore.  This happens every other day and it has really been impacting his work, and life in general.  I finally convinced him to go to the doctor.  Well, here in Sweden, that means the ER.  So, off we went to St. Görans Sjukhus (hospital).  Without going into too much detail, it was a complete waste of time.  The doctor told us that he had no clue what was wrong with the ankle and that he should take pain/anti-inflamatories pills for a week and that should fix the problem.  They refused to do an MRI until we tried this first.  Welcome to socialized medicine.  Feeling helpless, he took the meds, waited a week, and saw no change in the symptoms.  Monday morning he was walking to work and his ankle "popped" (that's how we refer to it) again.  I literally forced him to go to Karolinska Universitetssjukhuset (a top hospital here in Stockholm).  He went kicking and screaming.  I canceled all of my plans that day simply because I knew he would not sit there if there was a wait.  When we walked in, there were only four people ahead of us.  Feeling confident that this would only be a two hour ordeal, we stayed.  Within fifteen minutes the entire waiting room filled up.  Feeling rather cocky that we beat the crowd, we took a deep breath.  An hour later, after almost all of the people had been called in ahead of us, we realize that we were low-man on the totem poll.  We finally went back after 90 minutes of waiting.  The nurse took blood, left a port in his arm, and sent us back to the waiting room to wait for the doctor.  They needed the beds for the other patients that had piled in behind us.  After two hours of waiting, frustrated and angry are understatements.  I walked back to see why we were still waiting and the response was, "you are next... if nobody else comes in with an emergency".  The frustrating part of the medical system here is that Steve's case, along with others that were waiting in that ER, were not emergencies.  If we were in the states, we would have received a referral from our PCP and made an appointment directly with a specialist.  Instead, we waited a total of eight hours for a referral to a rheumatologist.  Neither Steve nor I thought we would be sitting there that long, so I never packed any snacks or food.  We were so hungry, our blood sugar levels had dropped so low, and we were not pleasant to be around.  At one point Steve was yelling at nurses as they walked by.  He also put his shoes and socks on three times to get up and leave.  But, there was not way I was leaving that place without some answers.  The best part, the nurses were standing around with nothing to do, while the doctors were literally sprinting in and out of "rooms" trying to get through all the patients.  It was the most ridiculous thing I've ever experienced.

Now that it's a thing of the past, I will tell you about the funny things that happened during those 8 hours of waiting.  For one, there was a lady sitting across from us that was so uptight I think she had a pole stuck up her butt.  She stared at everyone with a mean scowl on her face.  Since the waiting room was packed, this other sick lady, who was coughing and weezing, sat right next to her.  The mean lady shot her a dirty look and literally turned her body away when the weezing lady tried talking to her.  Steve and I were sitting across from them, watching the whole thing.  The best part of the story,  the lady on the other side of the weazing lady, took her collar and put it over her mouth, and talked into it the whole time.  We could not stop laughing... as they all three stared at us.  We actually tried to take a picture of them for this blog, but we didn't get the camera  out in time.  Weezing lady was considered "an emergency" and skipped the entire waiting process.  Within a few seconds, a man in a suit on his phone sat next to mean lady.  She turned to him, barked something in Swedish which I'm sure meant "get off of you phone and stop talking in my ear".  Once again, Steve and I busted out laughing.  No sooner did she get the words out of her mouth, but this really loud cell phone started chiming through the waiting room.  We all looked around, only to find mean lady picking it up!!!

Funny Experience 2:  When we were finally called back to see the doctor, we still had an hour wait.  They moved us into the hallway, like cows lining up for milking.  There were people lying in beds looking like they were dying, and here we are, yelling at nurses.  At one point, I glanced down the hallway, only to see an old lady taking her shirt off in front of the entire hospital, because she needed to change her clothes. At that point, Steve stood up and barked at me that we were leaving.  As I'm hysterically laughing, I made him sit back down.  There was no way I was leaving after waiting there that long.  We were so close to getting what we came for, a referral.

Funny Experience 3:  As all of this craziness is going on, there is a man cleaning the floors, weaving in and out of patients and doctors, on his motorized "mop".  No need to worry that he's leaving a wet floor for all of us to walk on.   He almost ran over my foot at one point too.  Well.... At least the hospital floors are clean!

Since we are on the subject of medicine, I will tell you another story.  Thanks to Jake, I now get warts again on my fingers.  This virus plagued me as a kid, then disappeared for many years, and now returned with a vengeance.  In the U.S. I would go to my dermatologist, she would usually cut them off of my fingers because the other treatments never worked for me.  They always numbed it, regardless of how they were treating it.  I made an appointment with the dermatologist here, and even making the appointment, the receptionist though it was strange that I was trying to get it removed by the doctor.  She did get me in though, two months later.  I sat with the doctor and told him that I have pesty warts and that I would like him to remove this one I have on my finger.  He looked at me and said, "we do not cut warts out, we will only freeze them or burn them off.  Since my warts laugh at the dry ice, I chose burning.  He told me three times that it doesn't hurt at all.  Since I've done this many of times, I knew he was wrong.  It hurt so badly that I wanted to scream... but since I chose to do this to myself, I just smiled and prayed that he would finish quickly.  I left with him prescribing an over the counter medication that I bought at the Apotec (pharmacy).  I did ask him about yearly exams (full body scan) for skin cancer prevention, he told me that since my skin is dark, I don't need to be checked but every 2-3 years.  Like I said, very different from American medicine.

The rest of the week was uneventful.  Lori and I stumbled across "National Preschool Day" as we were working out in the park.  It is a day that all the preschools set up booths with their students art work.  People browse and admire the work of these sweet little children.

one little boy showing off his art

many come out to admire the art

The boys have been working with Sofia, our Swedish tutor, for a few weeks now.  She is fabulous and they are learning a lot.  She begins the lessons by talking to them in Swedish.  I'm amazed to see that they understand and can answer her back.  I've decided to sit in on the lessons now and try to pick up on a few things.  We always play this memory game that she made for us.  I'm beginning to master the foods and animals.  To all of our surprise, Chase understands a lot of Swedish.  When he started talking to Sofia one day we were all shocked.  Children's minds are sponges and it's amazing to watch them learn!

One thing that I have a real difficult time with here in Sweden is the way they refer to the calendar.  For one, they write the date reversed.  For example, my birthday is January 21st and it's written like this:  21-1-72.  The other thing they do, is to refer to the calendar by weeks.  So, if I ask what week the boys are out of school, instead of saying, the third week in June, we say here week 24.  It amazes me how everyone understands each other.  I'm completely lost and have to keep going back and counting the weeks starting with January 1st.

A few Fridays back, Åsa, Jimmy, Steve and I went to see Lost In Translation at the Improv theatre.  It was very funny as the actors entertained us by acting as foreigners living in Sweden.  The entire show was in english, and very true on many accounts.  Afterwards we went to dinner at an Italian restaurant, Döden i Grytan.  The following day, the Norwegian festivals were running in a lot of the parks around the city.  Kronobergsparkan was one of those parks.  Since it was a  beautiful day and the windows were open, we were able to observe it from our living room window.

 Later that day, we took the boys to Ladbilslandets.  I discovered this place on the website, www.stockhome4kids, and the boys loved it.  The weather was perfect.... as you cans see from the photos, it's a boy's dream come true.

Smith's friend Leon came with us

Jake and Leon heading south

Besides driving on roads through the mini town, we were able to do some "sailing" as well.

these three had their own boat

Daddy and Chase

after a lot of fighting and arguing.....

they finally figured out how to work together

Driving the tractors was a huge hit as well....

And of course the race cars we the most fun....

We concluded this outing with some bounce house and playground fun.  Of course ice cream was involved.  What's a fun day of activity without ice-cream.

All four boys in the back

The beautiful weather continued that week for SIS's Sports Day.  I was extremely impressed by this school event.  I was thinking it was going to be like an American Field Day.  It more closely resembled the Olympics.  It was very organized as each class had a schedule of their events.  Mr. Osler was on the microphone in the huge stadium of Östermalms IP.  There was a lunch provided for all the students and a brief rest period allowing all the athletes to recharge.  The temperatures were in the high 70's to low 80's, something these kids are not used to anymore.  Some of the events that my boys competed in were long jump, shot put, hurdles, three legged races, relay races, sprints, and much more.

Jake beat everyone in hurdles

Smitty waiting to race in the relay

Smith's class during the long jump competition

Chase jumping the hurdles

Jake during the 40 yard dash

Smith's team won Kubb (Swedish version of Corn hole)

Chase's class having fun with the parachute

The big ol sandwich that the kids gobbled down

Smith's 2nd grade class

k

Chase's sweet little friends after a day of fun

In just a few weeks, Smith will have to say goodbye to his two best buds

Jake and his friend during the 3 legged race

The following day, the weather was just as beautiful, so Lori, Veronica and I went to lunch at Marlar Paveljongen,  on Norr Malaratrand.

Veronica and me.....

I have to say goodbye to this special friend... she moves to Charlotte in June

This time of year is very sad as we have to say goodbye to many of the friends that are leaving Stockholm.  This new life of mine allows me to meet so many wonderful people from around the world, but it's very difficult when we have to say goodbye.  We become close friends quickly, but deep in our hearts we know our time together is short lived.  We are all thankful for Facebook, the best way to stay connected to each other.

The final walk of the school year was Friday, as the Walking Club met one final time to exercise around Djurgården.  I didn't walk with this wonderful group as often as I would have like to (I volunteered on Fridays at the school and therefore wasn't able to walk each week) but I was sure not to miss the final outing of the year.  Here we are, on the bridge, my favorite view in Stockholm.

During the walk, we had our weekly visit of sheep crossing the road.

Sandy and I walked to the tram to go home.  We were shocked to see this VERY old trolly pick us up.  It made Sandy's day, so I took her picture in front of it.

That evening we had a family picnic in the park.  Steve made tacos and we brought them across the street to Kronobergsparken, sat on a picnic blanket, ate, and played in the park.  It was a perfect ending to a beautiful day.  The Swedes definitely know how to enjoy life and I'm glad we are starting to pick up on some of it.

picnic selfie

The final day of sunshine and warm temperatures was Sunday, May 25th, Swedish Mother's Day.  The day started with Jake's soccer game in Drottinholmsvagen, the home of the King's Castle.  I will post pictures of this in my next blog when I explore the grounds with Sandi and John.  For now, I will say, Åsa's mom and dad were wonderful tour guides as we drove to the soccer game together.  Unfortunately, we sat in an hour's worth of traffic, but it worked in my favor as they shared all they knew about this wonderful historic site.  They were a wealth of information, and besides being two of the nicest people, they made the trip go by so quickly as they shared stories of the king and queen.  Next week we will ferry over to the castle and explore the grounds on foot.

After soccer, the boys surprised me with a wonderful day, celebrating their mommy.  Jake took a nice walk with me along the water of Kungsholmen and we all met at Orangeriet to have an early dinner.  We sat on couches overlooking the water where they showered me with homemade cards and gifts.  We chatted and did a lot of people watching as we enjoyed the sunny, 75 degree temperatures.

I love the heartfelt cards that made me feel so special

Cucumber Gin and tonic

After dinner we all strolled the waterways, viewing the boats.  Our next stop was ice cream.  You think they're excited!!!!

Chase will dance for ice cream

Look at that view (and of course those adorable faces)

Yummy!

People enjoying the lounge chairs that are provided by the vendors

I am going to do this one day this summer

It took me too long to write this blog.  This time of year is very busy as the kids wrap up the school  year.  Their last day of school is Thursday, June 12th.  As much as I'm looking forward to summer and all the fun and exciting things we have planned, I'm also feeling overwhelmed with all that is ahead.  We are thrilled that we will have visitors with us the entire summer.... but also sad, knowing that the days will fly by and we will have to say goodbye to all of these special people that have come to visit.  I also feel a bit stressed about our upcoming move.  Even though the company will move us, it's still stressful as we prepare our house for the movers to pack.  As all things do, it will work out.... And we will survive.

I will end with this....you can all have a good laugh at my expense.

I believe I might have been washing my clothes for the past month with fabric softener.  There are still many things that I can't read in Swedish, and it seems that the difference between detergent and fabric softener is one of them.  We are all good now though... clothes are finally getting washed properly.

The next blog will contain Sandi and John's visit and all the pictures, our Swedish tutor and all that we are learning, and a day spent with a very old friend/cousin from my childhood years......